I'm a pleaser. That's my character.

At the end of the day I am a writer, and if I don't take care of this, no one else will.

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You must fight for it, strive for it, and insist upon it.

library is a beautiful old thing

The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.

Moss grows where nothing else can grow. It grows on bricks. It grows on tree bark and roofing slate. It grows in the Arctic Circle and in the balmiest tropics; it also grows on the fur of sloths, on the backs of snails, on decaying human bones. ... It is a resurrection engine. A single clump of mosses can lie dormant and dry for forty years at a stretch, and then vault back again into life with a mere soaking of water.

Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family, which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple, there they revere the family.