what storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank.

The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.

It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.

Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

fame is merely the fact of being misunderstood by millions of people.

Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That's one reason old men can send them to war.