What made something precious? Losing it and finding it.

You don't feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.

When you mention to people growing up in Cleveland they bring up the river catching on fire, or LeBron James leaving, they have these references, but no one imagines ending up there.

I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read what I wrote, fix things.

If you told people you were moving to Ohio, they wouldn't congratulate you. They'd say "OH WHY would you move there?" as if that was something that happened to you and you had to deal with.

They never discussed it, but both came to understand it as a promise: he would always make sure there was a place for her. She would always be able to say, Someone is coming. I am not alone.

I think this is something that is naturally built in in people, a need for attention and a need to be special and we are always trying to find a balance.

I am in a mixed race marriage myself, and I have a mixed race son....The racial perception interest is probably always going to be there to some extent.

After a while, the fear became a habit, too.

Being asked, "Where are you REALLY from?" It makes one feel OTHERED.

There is something about Midwest in general, that has kind of an underdog quality.

When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement.

Moral ideas about what constitutes a meritorious or meaningful use of one’s life and opportunities produce specific attitudes towards drug use and intoxication.

It is a truism that one person who wants something is a hundred times stronger than a hundred who want to be left alone.

I think Mike Pence figured that best case scenario he is vice president and worst case scenario he can say he tried to rein Donald Trump in for the good of the party.

Across the troubled maelstrom of time, people always need a beer.

Australians always want everyone to be average, as if the best thing you can do is fit in.

I don't like to sing loud.

We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.

A coward calls himself cautious, a miser thrifty.

Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.