Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

I took the volume to a table, opened its soft, ivory pages... and fell into it as into a pool during dry season.

not all feeling of butterflies in the tummy means love, it might sometimes mean lust, fear, hunger e.t.c

It is not the outside of people that bothers me, but the inside.

My goal is not to resolve conflicts and tensions in the region through more war. My goal is to make sure that, you know, we are able to negotiate a deal that we can verify.

Death is an engineering problem.

Go away. I told you, I'm not interested." She looked from his lap to his face. "Your nose is growing too.

Mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities.

So don't get me wrong, I love my songs, and I still love hearing them. That's history, baby.

You don't have a baby based on that publicity madness. People don't live like that. Especially black people who were raised in families with morals and standards and integrity.

Most people who fail in their dream fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment.