You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.

There's sometimes a weird benefit to having an alcoholic, violent father. He really motivated me in that I never wanted to be anything like him.

She says what holds their marriage together is that she feels too damn sorry for him to ask for a divorce.

Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie.

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

Some lives, conducted with grace, are beautiful arcs bridging this world to eternity.

Shakespeare again. Once you let him into your head, he takes up tenancy and will not leave.