For the professors in the academy, for the humanities generally, misery is more amenable to analysis: happiness is a harder nut to crack.

...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.

come back, come back to me

Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. you'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.

Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.

The same that oft-times hath charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.

If you keep looking back, you'll never be able to move forward. You're the only one who can stop yourself from your own success.

Religion is treasured when it brings goodness out of a person.

We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.

I remember everything, even the dates. But I don't want others to remember the details, just the image.

Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong.

Sometimes you've got to just commit to the idea and press forward and trust that you made the right decision.

It takes so little to change everything. If you really thought about it, it would scare you to death.

Making a mistake means overshooting a scene, shooting too many takes, for instance. Long after you've got it, you just keep shooting.