We don't know how to be women because we were taught it was not OK to be girls. Our most natural impulses were thwarted and distorted.

Janie full of that oldest human longing - self - revelation.

She waited for me to play out the string, to find the place where she had stopped and was waiting for me, to follow the breadcrumb tail until it dead-ended into her.

All right, then, her first rule for the rest of her days: no more looking outside for definitions. She might not have any clue who she was, but better to be lost and searching than shoved into a...

I have started taking the pills and I pray that everyone is right, that I have been sabotaged by my own brain chemicals. And that the little blue pill is going to put things right again.

Come on over to the dark side, Katie. I'll save you a seat next to me.

... Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; harken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night.

I tried to find something I already knew about life that might help me reach out and touch my brother and get him to look at me and himself.

That in effect was love. It struck him as astonishing. The word was so little in his vocabulary...

... notice how he will come to manhood with his own particular soul speaking through the windows which are his eyes, and such lovely eyes surely do prophesy and indicate the loveliest of souls.

There's nothing wrong with you Ray, your only trouble is you never learned to get out to spots like this, you've let the world drown you in its horseshit and you've been vexed...

It was my dream that screwed up, the stupid hearthside idea that it would be wonderful to follow one great red line across America instead of trying various roads and routes.

Losing through you what seemed myself, I find myself unimaginably mine, beyond sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears. Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: yours is the darkness of my...

You can't tell me that I don't know you. I see you. I see you better than you see yourself. And everything about you is beautiful.

And without Dex in my life, I like to think I could have somehow found contentment. But the truth is, I feel freer with Dex than I ever did when I was single. I feel more myself with him than without....

Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time

Man was made to sit quietly and find the truth within.

Despair is the price everyone pays for self-knowledge. If you look carefully at life, you will always find despair.

I'm looking for me in you, that my hollowness makes it impossible to identify my needs and my desires

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you...

- in reality it was escape she wanted, escape from her own self -

I shouldn't. I must get out all my ambitions

But I wonder if there is a place I fit in?

I think you know if you're different,” he ventured. “I think you know if you're gifted. How could you not?” “You know if you feel set apart,” said Nanny, “but who doesn’t feel that?...

But one must go where one's road leads, even when it's a distressing road.

What would you write if you weren't afraid?

I read The Great Gatsby. It is one of my favorite books and I had taken it out of the library in hopes that it would cheer me up; of course, it only made me feel worse, since in my own humorless state...

It tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.

In fact, at times I preferred to live in the forbidden world, and frequently my return home to the bright realm, no matter how necessary and good that might be, was almost like a return to someplace...

One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.