The worst things weren't outside of you.

Even the bad books I write are satisfying. I'm my least critical reader.

Kids are really tougher than adults, but we tend to forget this in an affluent society that lets kids indulge themselves.

...When this map was made, there was only empty forest in the south," Gran told Birle."Not empty," Granda corrected her. "The forest is never empty.

I got used to being a writer. To compare it to teaching - I taught for twenty-five years; for the first two or three years it was heady. I was discovering that I could do something and do it well. Be useful to people. It was exhilarating, sort of like the first two weeks of being in love with somebody, and then it becomes like the third bite of pizza. The first bite is wonderful. The second bite is not disappointing. The third? Meh. You get used to it.

...a really good friend, the kind of friend who - when they were together both of them were more able to be who they really were.

You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?