If someone in my family is getting emotionally bent out of shape, I've had to learn to adapt.

The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.

Hedonism can be a rational response to a difficult life.

The essay must be artistically rendered: You must keep the reader engaged, whether with wit, conflict, mischief, and/or yes, with honesty.

Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.

Most good essays are conversations with yourself - not just your decided thoughts but your dilemmas.

The trick is to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one’s example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.

A personal essay often includes some or a lot of personal confession. That makes the reader feel less lonely in their confusion and darkness.

Have fun writing, because it enhances both the writer's and reader's experience.

Confession makes you a more trustworthy narrator.

In new work, we need to see the shadow, however faint, of previous literary effort.

A house can be replaced but never a lost life.

A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.

A person always has a chance to protest this or that.

More than 60,000 jobs have been lost in the commercial aviation industry in the United States since 1999.

You go back and look at some of the ancient writings that exist throughout the world about wars and it's the same; the human beings' articulation of events is the same. That really fascinated me.

There is no love without hope, no hope without love, and neither hope nor love without faith.

Spiritual education is not a distinct and separate discipline; it is part and parcel of all types and levels of education, In fact, it is the very foundation on which a lasting edifice can be built.

My dental hygienist is cute. Every time I visit, I eat a whole package of Oreo cookies while waiting in the lobby. Sometimes she has to cancel the rest of the afternoon's appointments.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.