“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken le...”

“You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.”

“Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.”

“Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.”

“Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can't have too many friends because then you're just not really friends.”

“I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to.”

“HOW do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, soWHYpush to attain an ideal state of being that no two random people will agree isWHERE you want to be? Faultle...”

“When she thinks of the toxins built up inside of her from so many years of eating carelessly, of the resentment that has grown steadily over fifteen years of marriage, of the stretch marks and the ...”

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathingthey are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would nev...”

“once sailed neither the ship nor the shore ever remains the same again.”

“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”

“One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”