I listened so hard because it felt like, while she was telling me stories, she was massaging my soul, letting me know that I was not alone, that I will never have to be alone, that there are friends and family and churches and coffee shops. I was not going to be cast into space.

I gave her life, I can take life away.

Mary Beth Whitehead

He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.

Lech Walesa

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

Leo Tolstoy

Great passions, my dear, don't exist: they're liars fantasies. What do exist are little loves that may last for a short or a longer while.

Anna Magnani

The time that people aren't expecting what's going to happen, I find that's the best time to really cause the damage that needs to be done.

Marilyn Manson

The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.

Moliere

A closed mouth catches no flies.

Proverb

The enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrors, without shrinking or complaining: not one asked to be spared, but fought as long as they could stand or sit.

Davy Crockett

People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.

Henry Louis Gates

When you take a stand out of deep conviction, people know. They may not even agree, but they ask, 'Do I want someone who is willing to take a hard stand and someone I can trust to do that when the chips are down?' They want that.

Barbara Boxer

I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.

Lord Byron

Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader

Lionel Trilling, Notebook entry,