People imagine that missing a loved one works kind of like missing cigarettes,' he said. 'The first day is really hard but the next day is less hard and so forth, easier and easier the longer you go on. But instead it's like missing water. Every day, you notice the person's absence more.

While armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.

...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.

He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.

I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes - learning how to close the door on it when ordinary lfe intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it's time to start writing again - that I'm not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.