Desperation is like stealing from the Mafia: you stand a good chance of attracting the wrong attention.
My shadow serves as the friend I crave
You will hear thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms.
Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.
During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’ I said, ‘I can!’ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.
The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.
It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.
Since I first went to India twenty some years ago, there's been a palpable change. There's now pizza everywhere, meat is much more popular than it's ever been. Vegetarianism is "that quaint thing our parents did. "
It's like if a young woman writes it, then it's chick lit. We don't care if she's slaying vampires or working as a nanny or living in Philadelphia. It's chick lit, so who cares? You know what we call what men write? Books.
And I am left behind Corrupted crushed and blind All for a dream That in truth was never really mine.
I'm very humbled by the fact that grassroots efforts are rising up all over the country, but particularly in my home state of Ohio. I barely have words. To know that so many people across the state, from the rural areas to the urban areas, see something in my leadership and really believe I am someone for the people means a lot to me. That's how I want people to see me and my public service.