“Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.”

“Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond since it deals with what one is and not what one has.”

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this ...”

“The beckoning counts, not the clicking latch behind you”

“Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.”

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“Daddy once told me there's a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn't stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there's nothin...”

“When I opened the box, I had to remove myself from whose handwriting it was that I was reading and whose story I was hearing. I had to, or I never would have made it past the first letter. If I sto...”

“After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts like a Chinese nest of boxes oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front in our ancestors, back and back until...”