their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be

...with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.

I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.

That surge of power and delight, of confidence, of control. That sudden sense of the richness of the world. Its infinite possibility.

It was like waking from a nightmare to a worse nightmare.

But, if I dare say it, it wasn't until I had helped kill a man that I realized how elusive and complex an act a murder can actually be, and not necessarily attributable to one dramatic motive.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw, " that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me.

The ceilings had set off a ghostly echo, giving all that desperate hilarity the quality of a memory even as I sat listening to it, memories of things I'd never known.

I sometimes get the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itself than by the elegance of the gesture.

Though Julian could be marvelously kind in difficult circumstances of all sorts, I sometimes got the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itself than by the elegance of the gesture.

Be a fountain of peace to find peace everywhere.

The zeal of kids is to explore! Until you know how to sustain the real interest of your child, the real interest of your child shall be sustained by something else!

The gift of words, the source of enjoyment, the source of delight that comes within and the unfading beauty and energy of words.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me with a little assistance from a professor of Greek and a few poets.

I do like my life very much, yes.

I am a very approachable and personable person, and I always put myself last. Whether it's family or friends, I always think about them first.

Anybody can lead a frivolous life. A frivolous writer, however, must have taste and intelligence.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

The reveries of youth, in which so much energy is wasted, are the yearnings of a Spirit made for what it has not found but must forever seek as an Ideal