I will bear this grief, I will endure it. I will reach a point where it doesn't kick me down an abyss whenever I turn my back on it.

Today we fight. Tomorrow we fight. The day after, we fight. And if this disease plans on whipping us, it better bring a lunch, 'cause it's gonna have a long day doing it.

I've attempted to flood the path with light where I could, and where I could not I've wanted at least to hold up a candle so that others coming this way might not stumble too painfully.

How incredibly far our lives drift from where we knew with all certainty they would go. How little today resembles what yesterday thought it would look like.

How can it be that there is such a colossal gap between what we think we know about grief and mourning and what we actually find out when it comes to us?

A kind of Providence keeps us blind to the intensity of suffering so as to keep us sane, until that day when the suffering is our own or that of someone we love beyond imagining.

The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.

We are unique not by comparison but by compassion (the moral of my book The Cheetah and the Snail)

It is a tiresome way of speaking when you should despatch the business to beat about the bush.

There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

I'm not the kind of artist that wants to get a sound, refine it, and do it 'til I'm 50 so that it's the purest amber of my one way.

The answer to most questions can be given in one or two words, and no one will challenge you to go deeper.

What am I most ashamed of in my life? Not keeping my promise to my sister and being too scared of America to attend her funeral.

I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing.

Never do your enemy a minor injury.

People who create art would be fools to assume they know exactly what people are going to think of it.