The heart is forever inexperienced.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

If I’m not in love, if I’m not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

We love things we love what they are.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

Anything I’ve ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.

I don’t think there’s an option for me to fall in love slowly or at medium speed. I either do, or I don’t.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.

My mother taught children to love to dance.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from one generation to the other. We all – most of us, anyway – want connections with other people and spend our lives looking for them.

God is so big. It’s a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we’re small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

Tell your wife often how terrific she looks.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.

If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It’s what you learn.

We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.

I knew I was blessed with a gift of having both parents.

Grief is the price we pay for love.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Marriage is scary to me, man.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

It’s hard for anybody who’s been with me not to feel starved for affection when I’m making love to my ideas. Maybe it’s not meant for me to settle down and be married.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.

Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless!

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

Love other human beings as you would love yourself.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

I’ve got a crush on my backing singer.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

I get a little bit emotional during a game!

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.

God wants to help us… He loves us… we are His children. But He will not force His help on us at any time. He sees us when we struggle and fight and complain our way through things. And I believe it breaks His heart, when all we have to do is ask Him for help.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.