[B]eauty is one of the things that make you cry and so maybe beauty is always tied up in tears.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of.

Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone.

In the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.

We make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies.

The self is also a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn’t catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don’t.

I was being cured of soldiering on endlessly: my job was now to be still, which had become almost easy at last.

Always, just beyond all these things, was the silver sea, the lace border around all land like the silence around sounds or the unknowns beyond all knowledge.

Disenchantment is the blessing of becoming yourself.

There is no rest in the heart of God until He knows that you are at resh in His grace.

If you want to live your whole life free from pain, you must either be a god or a corpse.

Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?

I take pride in my sports knowledge. I take pride in everything I do. It's part of me.

We are destined not to go back to the level of animals that we've come from but to return to being by going beyond thinking.

The risks are far greater to your child of not getting immunized than any kind of speculative potential relationship between the vaccine and the development of autism.

In America, the word art has become like the word adultery. It's this big scarlet letter. When you say you're an artist, people are like, "Ugh."

A man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him.

I had always taken photos - always, always taken photos, made movies.

The people who support me and my dreams make me feel like I'm on top of the world.