I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what? In my life I have met astonishingly good people.

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

I know where I'm going. And if I don't know where I'm going, I don't tend to get anywhere.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.

For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.