“How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they look at one so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there is nothing in the world better than birds!”

“A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.”

“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and were both unhappy, and we both suffer.”

“Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don't you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of respect, such as no one's ev...”

“We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.”

“Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve?”

“There comes a hush between darkness and day.Like expectation of a caress.A murmur of silence. Tree crests peeked down at Paulette through slowly lifting fog. Bark felt around for its texture again....”

“Underneath the groundyou can't hear a soundnot even the sweet falling rainyou might forget about tomorrowforget about the swallowsbut they won't forget youthey won't forget you”

“Thinking, like other drugs, can be a useful distraction from pain, as long as it's managed and doesn't become an addiction.”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”