This is the way you look at the poorest details of the world resurfaced, after you've been driving for a long time -- you feel their singleness and precise location and the forlorn coincidence of you being there to see them.

Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls... Even when they're being kind... especially when they're being kind.

This is the day of wonders. The land is covered with trees like a head with hair and behind the ship the sun rises tipping the top trees with light. The sky is clear and shining as a china plate and the water playfully ruffled with wind. Every wisp of fog is gone and the air is full of the resinous smell of the trees. Seabirds are flashing above the sails golden like creatures from Heaven, but the sailors raise a few shots to keep them from the rigging.

I have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than most people.

We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do-we do it all the time.

Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.

People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable – deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.