Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been picked out and given separate names?

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemed permanent.

& besides, I don’tdesign my smiles to be nets because I’m not fishing

Civil war tends to give a helping hand to the velocity of currency, Ukraine can attest to that. However, it is quite an unpleasant way to find the intrinsic value of worthlessness.

We get so beat down by what we need, sometimes we forget how to want.

What gets projects done for me is not inspiration. It's curiosity and rigor.

Whatever you focus on, you become. That is the key line, you know. Meditation is the bow and concentration is the arrow.

For I am yearning to visit the limits of the all-nurturing Earth, and Oceans, from whom the gods are sprung.

Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.

Dude, my hair is like an architectural structure. It’s like… a building.