Happiness compresses time, makes it dense and bright, pocketsized.

Maybe there would be a bad outcome for some of the others, but no one was going to shoot a soprano.

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.

Updike and Bellow and Roth were my three favorite writers when I was young and throughout my life.

Time is the most extraordinary gift for friendship. You'll get to eat your meals together and study together; in some cases you'll even sleep in the same room. You'll have time to waste on each other. You'll find out every single thing you have in common and still have time to catalogue all of your differences. Don't underestimate the vital necessity of friendship in your life because it is the thing that will sustain you later, when there will be considerably less time.

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us