The price we pay for the complexity of life is too high. When you think of all the effort you have to put in --telephonic, technological and relational --to alter even the slightest bit of behavior in this strange world we call social life, you are left pining for the straightforwardness of primitive peoples and their physical work.

I know absolutely nothing about where I'm going. I'm fine with that. I'm happy about it. Before, I had nothing. I had no life, no friends, and no family really, and I didn't really care. I had nothing, and nothing to lose, and then I knew loss. What I cared about was gone; it was all lost. Now I have everything to gain; everything is a clean slate. It's all blank pages waiting to be written on. It's all about going forward. It's all about uncertainty and possibilities.

Gregory Galloway

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.

Joyce Maynard

No man has come to true greatness who has not felt that his life belongs to his race, and that which God gives to him, He gives him for mankind.

Phillips Brooks

Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life let us swear eternal friendship.

Sydney Smith

My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.

Twyla Tharp

Photograph is a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite so good as that of a Cheyenne.

Ambrose Pierce

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.

Will Rogers

Aim higher in case you fall short.

Suzanne Collins

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

Horace Walpole

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

Victor Hugo

Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.

Tom Stoppard