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.

Rudy, please, wake up. God damn it, wake up, I love you. Come on, Rudy, come one, Jesse Owens, don't you know I love you, wake up, wake up, wake up...

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.

But the small cloud which appeared in the northwest four months ago had blown up into a mighty storm and then into a screaming tornado, sweeping away her world, whirling her out of her sheltered life,...

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

Superheroes work the hardest when things get tough.

My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.

A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is.

Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.

Have you ever fought an opponent you had no defense against? Like a fire breather or an acid spitter? Once I faced a female with diamond skin, Nix said breathlessly. I was transfixed - even as she was...

"I'm not stupid, nor a liar," I said, "and if I can't do any good, I can at least do something."