Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
[In the aftermath of death] Small talk feels too small, big talk too enormous.
The victim mentality may be the last uncomplicated thing about life in America.
The difference between government and leadership is that leadership has a soul.
If an opportunity scares you, that's God's way of saying you should jump at it.
I do think there's some aspect of being a novelist that is a little crazy making.
That's really what I want in a leader; I want somebody who's really, really smart.
The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.
When children are small, parents should run their lives and not the other way around.
Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.
I think when people keep saying to you, "You're good at this," you just keep doing it.
When you really want to say no, say no. You can't do everything - or at least not well.
I think that we really fool ourselves about our ability to be safe and secure nowadays.
All the things we don’t say, all the words we swallow, and it makes nothing but trouble.
You want to have fun with your kids, and no one has fun with someone who runs roughshod.
The New Testament has had a really powerful effect on how I write and how I live my life.
When men do the dishes, it's called helping. When women do the dishes, it is called life.
Sometimes we don't see out of our peripheral vision what's coming right around the corner.
Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.
The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed.
Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. We human beings are best understood one at a time.
Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.
I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before.
Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it.
I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of required responsibility.
All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.
If men got pregnant, there would be safe, reliable methods of birth control. They'd be cheap, too.
Barack Obama presents as kind of a cool character, and I think that that's his natural personality.
There's something undeniable about the posture of a person trying not to acknowledge your existance
All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.
When I write a novel, I have what I think of as an icon that helps get me into the world of the book.
The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you.
high fashion has little to do with what women wear and a lot to do with what retailers mark down later.
People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.
Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.
Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.
Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.
Get a life. A real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.
I think there are some stories that need to be told by a specific person as opposed to in the third person.
Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.
If you want something, it will elude you. If you do not want something, you will get ten of it in the mail.
She say guilt is a useless emotion." "Oh, please," says Nancy. "Guilt is what separates humans from animals.
And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.
Obama doesn't seem like a burger and a beer kind of guy. I have to say, I don't find that problematic at all.
A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.
I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.
It is so easy to waste our lives: Our days, our hours, our minutes ... it is so easy to exist instead of live.
I think the very best thing about the internet is that I can read all the London papers every day if I want to.
I hope readers will do what I do when I read a novel I like: talk in ways that will illuminate their own lives.
I really feel like I'm a liberal because I'm a Catholic, because I took the words of the New Testament to heart.