Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.

I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.

Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.