longing to travel while you are already traveling is, I admit, a kind of greedy madness

I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I'd been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion...well, surely there was a way to learn that trick.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.

I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one.

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