Words worth keeping

It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written — behind your silence and your suffering.

We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.

Curiouser and curiouser!

Your silence will not protect you.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.

Patience, grasshopper," said Maia. "Good things come to those who wait.""I always thought that was 'Good things come to those who do the wave,'" said Simon. "No wonder I've been so confused all my life.

The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot!

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it.