if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.

Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.

We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive.

Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don't get all writerly: 'He opened the door.' There, it's open.

They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.

Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.

Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.

In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.

I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.

I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.

I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

Teach For America is working hard to be one significant source of the leadership we need.

Of course it's true: the public want to see young people - young people are the people who go to the cinema. It's a sad fact of life, but you've got to accept it and not whine about it.

The world before 1914 was already a world in which the welfare of each individual nation was inextricably bound up with the prosperity of the whole community of nations.

Today exists between yesterday and tomorrow.

I still live as normal a life as anybody else. I have two homes to run. I have my staff to take care of. I work, pay bills and attend society meetings like everybody else.

The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range.

Congress should not be like the Super Bowl where you have to have one team that's going to win and another team that's going to be a loser.

Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city'half as old asTime'!

I didn't understand that playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. No one can be any one thing all the time.