Needing and getting don’t seem likely to match up any time soon... What needs doing is mine to do.

Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.

We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.

Thinking: this journey will be the axle of my life.

All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.

Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

A lizard in the spring - hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly - go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground - root a mountain down.

He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.

My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home.

Obstacles are opportunities turned upside down...or prisons self-imposed.

My point is that when you fall in love it's with a real person with flaws. Not with a perfect character from a fairy tale.

And I am nothing if not a stupid, stupid man.

That man is the most immortal who has done the most and the best praying. They are God heroes, God's saints, God's servants, God's vicegerents.

Any actor who is being honest will admit there's always a small or large part of the real you in every character. It's impossible not to have that.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment.

There are also half bricks. As the bricks are always laid so as to break joints, this lends strength and a not unattractive appearance to both sides of such walls.

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant.