Marriage is - among other things - a study in contradiction and disappointment, and inside that reality there is space for us to truly learn how to love.

I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.

I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it. Then I remembered that line from Jaws and couldn't help smiling: 'We're gonna need a bigger boat.

No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up.

Watch for the people whose eyes light up when you talk about your dream. Those are the people you keep.

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught by a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it--even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

Your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.