...Mrs. Bostwick's face was heavy and lethargic, without any strength or delicacy, and it bore the deep marks of what must have been a habitual dissatisfaction.

It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the heart, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance.

But the required survey of English literature troubled and disquieted him in a way nothing had ever done before.

While they talked they remembered the years of their youth, and each thought of the other as he had been at another time.

But William Stoner knew of the world in a way that few of his younger colleagues could understand. Deep in him, beneath his memory, was the knowledge of hardship and hunger and endurance and pain.

Focus on keeping faith and growing your roots of light so strong and deep that no one, not even yourself, can make you believe something about yourself that is not good for your soul.

It is perhaps necessary for something dear to be lost.”“Why?”“Perhaps it is necessary to the making of a story. A story after all is a way of remembering love.

If you don't want somwone to change your life for you, you've got to change it yourself. (Vanishing Acts, pg. 339)

I'm really influenced by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases. So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease.

I had no idea, when I was writing early on, that my poems would be published or read by anyone, never mind people I knew or would meet. I just wrote urgently - naïvely, I suppose, looking back.

I would say to women, always question what you're empowering yourself for and what are you claiming power for.

Well, Fellini... there is always Fellini.

Thou seest how sloth wastes the sluggish body, as water is corrupted unless it moves.

Once you're imagining being the main character, and you're having the conversations and actually being there, the magic in fiction writing takes over.