A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.

Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.

It is the artists who make the true value of the world, though at times they may have to starve to do it. They are like earthworms, turning up the soil so things can grow, eating dirt so that the rest of us may eat green shoots.

We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.

In loving life you love what can't survive.

If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.

Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said.