He didn't know of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight, and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. "I know," he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.

For it must be very lonely being dead.

Tragedy alters everything.

A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story.

People whose lives are not balanced by a healthy love of money suffer from an appalling obsession with personal integrity.

One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else.

I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.