.. now i begin to feel a longing so great, so sharp, i fear it will never be assuaged. i think it will mount, and mount, and make me mad, or kill me.

And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.

I barely knew I had skin before I met you.

Being in love, you know... it's not like having a canary, in a cage. When you lose one sweetheart, you can't just go out and get another to replace her.

Even ashes are a part of your freedom.

I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

I do love the past but wouldnt want to live in it.

Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?

Why is it we can never love the people we ought to?

I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day.

With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.

Nothing can make a face more impenetrable than the mask of kindliness.

I've always felt alienated. I realized that I've been terrified my entire life. So I can identify that fear which drives so many of the people that I write about.

I lost 28 pounds in my divorce... because that's what a soul weighs.

Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

See my father knew a lot about music, he played the piano and he would do theory and stuff like that, but I didn't learn anything from him, but I played that for him and he liked it a lot.

The film industry is a cyclical business. Even musicals are coming back.

No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.

Always stay open to surprise.

Don't be bitter. Everybody suffers. If you can accept your suffering then you will understand other people better. Be grateful for pain. Love life.

You have to believe in the process. You have to believe in the things that you are doing to help the team win. I think you have to take the good with the bad.