In Vineyard Haven, on Martha's Vineyard, mostly I love the soft collision here of harbor and shore, the subtly haunting briny quality that all small towns have when they are situated on the sea

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time — for jittery people.

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.

The writer's duty is to keep on writing.

Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.

The pain is unrelenting; one does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.

In the case of smokers, the abuse leads to death, sicknesses, cancer, amputation, loss of all kinds.

Stop listening to the TV tell you about America the beautiful . . . get up and be America the beautiful.

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

I think boarding school does give you an independence.

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star.

It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.

When to the cross I turn my eyes,And rest on Calvary,O Lamb of God, my sacrifice,I must remember Thee.

I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.

Mem'ry All alone in the moonlight I can smile at the old days Life was beautiful then.

Happiness is liberty from everything that makes us unhappy.