Shallow believers prefer a shallow God.

Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.

Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old. Throughout this fresh, if common, pursuit of knowledge, one conviction crowned her efforts: ...she knew there was nothing to fear.

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.

Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature.

Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the characters I'm writing about, something happens that they move from wherever they are in the beginning to knowledge or wisdom, they know something they never would have acknowledged or realized if it hadn't been for my book - that for me is what literature does.

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.