What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both.

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

If you fill your head with positive thoughts, there won't be any room left for negative ones.

To be in Jesus' easy yoke is an easy way of doing hard things." (p. 202)

All serious daring starts from within.

Society is a system of inherited forms reducing our humiliating passivity to nature. We may alter these forms, slowly or suddenly, but no change in society will change nature.

I love old gardens best- tired old garden that rest in the sun.

The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential.

If you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!

Hierarchy, as in the Catholic Church, has to do with power, and vertical attention has to do with longing.

My falcon now is sharp and passing empty, and till she stoop she must not be full-gorged, for then she never looks upon her lure.