Back then, he'd have to leave at the end of August for the start of school, so the week before Labor Day became it's own tiny season of gloom, like a hundred Sunday nights crowded together.

Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.

We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.

Thinking: this journey will be the axle of my life.

All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.

Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

A lizard in the spring - hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly - go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground - root a mountain down.

He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.

Books are not distractions. Rather, they are, and have been, the most profound and accurate mirrors man has ever crafted.

Richard felt about as conspicuous as a foreskin at a Jewish nudist camp.

They who shared none of my defeats should take no pride in celebrating my successes.

I make the most of all that comes And the least of all that goes.

If people wanted to fight me-because of my hair or because my skin was too dark-then I fought them

The more you do your homework, the more you're free to be intuitive. But you've got to put the work in.

The business of art is to enlarge and correct the heart and to lift our ideals out of the ugly and the mean through love of the ideal. The business of art is to appeal to the soul.

Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein.

Civilizations have come and gone and, in spite of our vaunted progress, I am tempted to ask again and again, 'To what purpose?'

I've played lots of villains in my time and I think the reason they've been so successful is that they're not two-dimensional. They're not black and white. That's the gig.