Here was something I already knew to be true about myself: Just as there are some wives who will occasionally need a break from their husbands in order to visit a spa for the weekend with their girlfriends, I will always be the sort of wife who occasionally needs a break from her husband in order to visit Cambodia. Just for a few days!

In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted.

You must find another reason to work, other than the desire for success or recognition. It must come from another place.

The thing I love about Dickens is the omniscient, omnipotent narrator, and the great confidence of the narrator, which marks 19th-century novelists in general and Dickens in particular.

A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella.

The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.

I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.