When people talk about the good old days, I say to people, 'It's not the days that are old, it's you that's old.' I hate the good old days. What is important is that today is good.
People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory.
Buy what you don’t have yet, or what you really want, which can be mixed with what you already own. Buy only because something excites you, not just for the simple act of shopping.
I grew up in the 1970s, but I don't think a whole lot had changed from the '60s. Oh, it had changed in the law books - but not in the kitchens of white homes.
Demetrie came to wait on my grandmother in 1955 and stayed for 32 years. It was common, in Mississippi, to have a black domestic cleaning the kitchen, cooking the meals, looking after the white children.
The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.
I had always dreamed of living in Chapel Hill. When I was a college student at Hollins University in Virginia, I came down to Chapel Hill for summer school and just loved it.
Fight scenes are very physical for me. Sometimes I require my own body to move through them before I can tell where a character's likely to feel it.
If something is visceral and unsettling for me, my job is to not look away, not to punk out. Sometimes the dark things come from places inside me, experiences I've had, that need to be transformed.
You're my friend, Danny. You understand? There's no debt between friends." Maybe it's just that the debt gets so high you stop counting it.
The czar was always sending us commands - you shall not do this and you shall not do that - till there was very little left that we might do, except pay tribute and die.
There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred; and even the lucky ones had their troubles.
When a man sees you are happy with him but you can be just as happy having nothing to do with him, that's when he won't want to leave your side.
Theologians and other clerks, You won't understand this book, -- However bright your wits -- If you do not meet it humbly, And in this way, Love and Faith Make you surmount Reason, for They are the protectors of Reason's house.
Literally thousands of e-mails over the course of a book go out to people I've never met, people who might end up being the focus of a chapter.
I don't know of many people who've done sex research with an eye toward people saying sex is bad for you, except for the promiscuity and cervical cancer link - which is actually a valid discovery.
I've always been a bit of a space geek. I wrote an article years ago about the neutral buoyancy tank, which is this biblically sized pool where they train astronauts. And it was just the coolest thing.
The dump was kind of like a department store for Ray, but even more like a holy cementery where he could organize abandoned dreams and wrecked things into families, in a way, that stayed together.
Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.
Trying to suppress or eradicate symptoms on the physical level can be extremely important, but there's more to healing than that; dealing with psychological, emotional and spiritual issues involved in treating sickness is equally important.
While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one's own well-being.
