Quickening quotes

The Tibetan missionaries in their mood of bright confidence disconcerted the imperial governments by laughing the new movement into frustration. For a sham faith cannot stand ridicule.

Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.

I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game.

It is true that when you're in the White House alone, it is a lonely place. Big and lonely.

I believe that the brain has evolved over millions of years to be responsive to different kinds of content in the world. Language content, musical content, spatial content, numerical content, etc.

I don't feel anything when I watch Shaquille O'Neal play. I don't feel anything coming off him.

Or maybe, he thought now, he just didn't recognize all those other girls. The way a computer drive will spit out a disk if it doesn't recognize the formatting. When he touched Eleanor's hand, he recognized her. He knew.

I found the poems in the fields And only wrote them down

So, I am independently well-off and don't have to do anything, but I still do. I write books, lecture around the world, work with scientists and governments.

We look on those approaching the banks of a river all must cross, with ten times the interest they excited when dancing in the meadow.