I awake with a not entirely sickened knowledge that I am merely young again and in a funny way at peace, an observer who is aware of time's chariot, aware that some metamorphosis has occurred.

God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle—or instruction.

I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.

It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself.

Memory, so complete and clear or so evasive, has to be ended, has to be put aside, as if one were leaving a chapel and bringing the prayer to an end in one's head.

I am in an adolescence in reverse, as mysterious as the first, except that this time I feel it as a decay of the odds that I might live for a while, that I can sleep it off.

Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been

Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.

I feel sorry for the man who marries you... because everyone thinks you're sweet and you're not.

There's nothing wrong with stretching the truth. We stretch taffy, and that just makes it more delicious.

Haters will unwittingly give you the inspiration you need to conquer your great obstacle of destiny if you did not give up

You'll never make it out there. You weren't made for South Pole adventures." Flora gave her an icy look. "I think I know by now what I was made for.

Lorne knows that the most exhausting people occasionally turn out the best stuff.

Humor is an excellent method of keeping a tight rein on unproductive displays of emotion.

In the '80s, everyone wanted to be in opera. It was groovy.

And as an ev'ning dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts And nests in order rang'd Of tame villatic fowl.

Do not jump into reaction mode at the first appearance of negative energy. Just breathe, and relax.

It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.

Religion is not a dogma, nor an emotion, but a service.