I am heartbroken, but I have been heartbroken before, and this might be the best for which I can hope.

Occasionally there are parents who say, "I brought my child so he or she could learn what the career of a writer is like, and you did this long theatrical performance instead, and I'm very disappointed."

Is it fair for the bears to come down to where humans live, looking for food? Is it fair for the Duke's soldiers to shoot at them? Is it fair for the bears to crush them with giant snowballs? Often, if you point out something that isn't fair, someone will reply, "Life isn't fair." What is to be done with such people?

Opera was an enormous part of my childhood. My parents were both opera buffs, and they met in the box seat of an opera performance. And I also was a boy soprano, so before puberty hit, I was onstage playing a wide variety of orphans and urchins in all sorts of operas, and the sheer melodrama of their stories was just always appealing to me.

The sea is nothing but a library of all the tears in history.

I don't know why wicked places generally look wicked. You'd think they'd look nice, to fool people, but they hardly ever do.

...you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.