I need to remember what they look like. I try to hold them still behind my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they won't stay still for me, they move, there's a smile and it's gone,...

They live in human memory, man. That's what keeps them alive.

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments - which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a...

For someone who likes to get around as much as I do, I really travel quite badly. Planes frighten me, boats bore me, trains make me dirty, cars make me car-sick. And practically nothing can equal the...

I'm thinking about past events. I'm interested in recall, exact recall, of what was said, who said it and to whom. I want to know the truth, undistorted by time and revision and wishes and regrets.

You are still thinking like a child, talking about friendship and crap. You'll regret it when you see one of them die in front of you.

He did not wholly understand the intricate play of ideas and the complex phrases, but as he read he sensed a strong, whole purpose behind the words and he felt that he almost understood.

I'm not mad. I already told you that. We all have mistakes in our past... and our future. It's a fact of life.

Mourning was really for the living.

- I won't argue the point with you, it is so, and I am convinced of it, madam, as much as I can be, that both men and women bear pain or sorrow, and, for all I know, pleasure too, best in a horizontal...

Nothing much bothered you for a while and you kept walking like a silhouette through this town, saying hi's and goodbyes, acting polite at all times. But there is no fire in your heart; you are not...

We are born with the innate capacity to express empathy. Experiencing our own cuts and bruises, encountering our own difficulties and disappointments, expands our cognitive world and rouses the...

We want our wounds to speak for themselves, but usually we end up having to speak for them.

The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life...

How can I survive without a book to read?

For a pregnant woman to give birth, she's gotta feel the pain of pulling a watermelon out of her nostril. For an Artist to create a masterpiece, he's gotta feel the pain of pulling entire galaxies out...

In effect, painting is the still memory of {the artist's} human motion, and our individual responses to it depend on who we are, on our character, which underlines the simple truth that no person...

Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.

Out of all the things that look & bleed, the most bruised is a man who has seen his dreams crushed and experienced miserable hopelessness.

And yet he found comfort in the absence of telling.

Gravity disappears again, and we rise up off the floor like spooks from a grave. It's like the Rapture in here every thirty seconds.

Misery teaches you the value of joy. It reveals to you the gravitas of human life.

with static electricity

Only by being absolutely free can one dance well, love well, and write well. All these activities are tremendously important.

You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.

In the sense of movement a boat is a living thing

There would be no sequel to the sadness

So this is pain. So this is wretchedness. So this is misery. I never knew.

Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them.

Many of Juan Diego's demons had been his childhood companions - he knew them so well, they were as familiar as friends.