Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of.

In the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.

We make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies.

The self is also a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn’t catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don’t.

I was being cured of soldiering on endlessly: my job was now to be still, which had become almost easy at last.

Always, just beyond all these things, was the silver sea, the lace border around all land like the silence around sounds or the unknowns beyond all knowledge.

Disenchantment is the blessing of becoming yourself.

To tell a story is always to translate the raw material into a specific shape, to select out of the boundless potential facts those that seem salient.

Any hand can condem, but it takes a helping hand to build.

There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.

Around thrones the thunder rolls.

What can bombs know of the illuminated fields so golden with heaven in your heart’s sacred lands?

When I doubt that I exist, I pinch myself.

Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else.

It's important to realize that the images are everywhere, not just where you want or expect them to be.

I don't want to leave skiing early. I want to feel like I've done everything I can do.

Maybe what I admired most about John Steinbeck is that he never mortgaged his 45-acre heart for a suite in an ivory tower.

God made the human body like a machine with built-in obsolescence.