...our eyes locked in one of those looks that sometimes happen between strangers, when both wordlessly agree that reality contains sinkholes whose depths neither can ever hope to fathom.

...we take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

What about you? Are you happiest and saddest right now that you've ever been?" "Of course I am." "Why?" "Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.

She struggled with her sadness, but tried to conceal it, to divide it into smaller and smaller parts and scatter these in places she thought no one would find them.

To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.

That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.

When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?

I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.

So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.

God, I love a man who reads

He immediately went down with a thud and I was pretty certain most of the furniture in the room jumped when he landed.

Management is now where the medical profession was when it decided that working in a drug store was not sufficient training to become a doctor.

I think I'm less afraid of failure than some others.

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.

When you're a big money earner and your husband isn't, it makes you question how feminine you are. I felt I was less feminine than if I was a supporting wife, or a second fiddle, or 'Mrs. Higgins.

Those that can, do. Those that can't, complain.

Boldness makes even the smallest animal dangerous

In mathematics the complicated things are reduced to simple things. So it is in painting.

'Forrest Gump' was great, it was fabulous. It lasted much longer than anybody thought, and brought me a degree of attention that no human being on the face of the planet deserves.