Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.

We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.