She wants her silence to be final. Here, more than anyplace else, she wants her memory uncontested. She does not want me talking to others, gathering other stories, looking into the remnants of my father's past. When she is silent, she wants those things about which she refuses to speak to remain as quiet as the tomb. That is the ultimate power of stories. They take on themselves the decision about what will be remembered and what will be told. The part of the past she claims most fiercely is the part she wants forgotten.

The only change I can really see is that I don't have to shop for pants in stores anymore.

Larry David

Ever since I could first write I have been doing so. When I was taught how to write and read at school, I made up my mind that this was what I love to do best and this was the world I was going to occupy.

Anita Desai

When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'

Lao Tzu

Think of submitting our measure to the advice of politicians! I would as soon submit the subject of the equality of a goose to a fox.

Anna Howard Shaw

How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?

George Eliot

I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.

William Gilmore Simms

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.

Jules Renard

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Kahlil Gibran

Great artistic talent in any direction... is hardly inherent to the man. It comes and goes; it is often possessed only for a short phase in his life; it hardly ever colors his character as a whole and has nothing to do with the moral and intellectual stuff of the mind and soul. Many great artists, perhaps most great artists, have been poor fellows indeed, whom to know was to despise.

Hilaire Belloc

The people who actually make the advances in theoretical physics don't think in these categories that the philosophers and the historians of science subsequently invent for them

Stephen Hawking

It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.

Marilyn Monroe

It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.

Simone Weil