However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there's one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I...

To flee forever is beyond the capacity of most: at some point even a hunted animal will stop, exhausted, and awaits its fate, if only for a while.

I had spoken to the universe, and the universe hadn't given a damn.

The hands are the eyes of the blind!

Hope, only hope, nothing more, reaches a point where there is nothing left but it; it is then that we discover that we still have everything.

A bastard son must fight his own way in the world. Osferth knew that.

People's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of...

It's a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take.

I think someday you're going to be a great writer,

If you're not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you.

He says the best way out is always through And I agree to that, or in so far As I can see no way out but through. - ROBERT FROST

Most people start from disadvantage {often with no idea they are doing so} and do just fine. It's not unfair, it's universal.

Bits of it floating in the air, he said. It's like dust. You walk about and don't see it, don't notice it, but it's there and it's all coming down, covering everything. You're breathing it in. You...

"I am not perfect." It came out in a rush of breath. "See, I thought I was. Thank God I ain't. See, a perfect thing ain't got a chance. The world kills it, everything perfect. {Listen to him!} Now...

It was a morning for Ella Fitzgerald. There are fine things in the world, after all. Dignity, refinement, warmth and humour, where you'd never expect to find them. Even as an old woman, an amputee in...

He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of.

From the age of nine, I was on the streets. This came about because I was being rude with my parents and I was moving things without their permission, like money. So my stepfather didn't like what I...

There was a relentless forward motion to the man. The universe might knock him down over and over again, but unless he was dead, he'd just keep getting up and shuffling ahead toward his goal. Holden...

Get used to disappointment.

To be nobody - but - yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop...

If I'd had any way of knowing that things were - as Lily Tomlin once said - going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I'm not sure how I would have slept that night.

It's been one nightmare after another, Christina thought. Pretty soon I won't be able to keep track of them all.

Goodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read. No one can play like you. I'll never drink champagne. No one can play like you. - Liesel

I've looked at the world for quite a few years now and I've found that if I don't laugh, I'll probably end up crying. - Prince Kheldar of Drasnia

Feeling of courage. Great desire to continue living.

Care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

Life we can't control, she thought. We must accept the cork we are and stay afloat, and bob gaily when we can. She

The loneliness is the worst, because this knowledge is something that cannot be shared, only suffered. Just as well. Why should anyone else have it easy. Spoken like a true New Yorker.

The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-à-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well,...

You were very brave," Nancy said, with the same encouraging indifference