Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I'd lose my mind.
Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.
WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers.
She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.
The only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken from us.
I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.
I was feeling everything too much. Everything pulled at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools.
Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.
I had grown up as a fan of Studs Terkel. In Chicago he sort of looms large and is mentioned often.
Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot.
Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
I really believe strongly that kids should be spared the runoff of their parents' lives and problems.
Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the tree calligraphic.
I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.
I went to Saudi Arabia in 2010, and spent most of my time in Jeddah and the King Abdullah Economic City.
Every time my brain parks the car neatly in the driveway, my mouth drives through the back of the garage.
But I'm thinking about 12 things at once, a hundred thousand times a day. Most people do, I would imagine.
Paper is a uniquely beautiful format, more so than the web, I think: you need to invest in the aesthetics.
When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it’s cruel and wrong and we all know this.
Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?
Why do you want to be on The Real World? Because I want everyone to witness my youth. Why? Isn't it gorgeous?
Because I grew up with this naive expectation of people doing right, I get shocked by every little violation.
Hello Frances, I have just been to health class, and I was wondering how your feminine parts were developing.
I am a bike enthusiast; there's a certain amount of romance to bikes. They're both beautiful and utilitarian.
Status in itself is criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.
Pain comes at me and I take it, chew it for a few minutes, and spit it back out. It's just not my thing anymore.
She felt some measure of relief knowing that in the very least, on the open road she would have some time to think.
I'm interested in the human impact of the giant foot of misplaced government. After all, we encounter it every day.
I need eight hours to get maybe 20 minutes of work done. I had one of those yesterday: seven hours of self-loathing.
If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.
Every time I get through the work on a book of nonfiction, I say I'll never do it again; it takes so much out of you.
Love is implicit in every connection. It should be. Thus when absent it makes us insane. (You Shall Know Our Velocity)
The only thing that everyone needs to look out for is keeping the students reading through high school and thereafter.
You know, it's been proven that 35 to 40 hours a year with one-on-one attention, a student can get one grade level higher
I still get my news from the newspaper in the morning. I just have an affection for paper, and that's no secret, I guess.
You know, it's been proven that 35 to 40 hours a year with one-on-one attention, a student can get one grade level higher.
But Saudi Arabia is surprising in a lot of ways. Like any place, or any people, it relentlessly defies easy categorization.
All we really want is for no one to have a boring life, to be impressive, so we can be impressed. ~ on the friends we choose.
Loneliness is just a thing that I'm not personally interested in. So far, it hasn't been on my docket of things to write about.
My head was a condemned church with a ceiling of bats, but I swung from this dark mood to euphoria when I thought about leaving.
How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.
You invite things to happen. You open the door. You inhale. And if you inhale the chaos, you give the chaos, the chaos gives back.
I had the sensation that I might always be running like this, that I would always have to run, and that I would always be able to run.
Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.
I hung up the phone, jubilant, and threw myself into a wall, then pretended to be getting electrocuted. I do this when I'm very happy.
To me, the print business model is so simple, where readers pay a dollar for all the content within, and that supports the enterprise.
Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.
The air is like being wanted, we say, and they nod approvingly. The air is like getting older, they say, and they touch our arms gently.
It's so easy to print in the Midwest. You're saving months in shipping and customs, so we have started printing a number of books there.
Everyone in the life before was cranky, I think, because they just wanted to know. --After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned