A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.

There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty-unless she is wed to something more meaningful-is always superficial

Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.

Who cares? If he is good to you? None of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we?

It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together–my future, my past, the whole of my life–and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!