Grief is what tells you who you are alone.

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

My idea of a productive day, as both a child and an adult, was reading for hours and staring out the window.

I'd confused need with love and love with sacrifice.

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

If writers possess a common temperament, it's that they tend to be shy egomaniacs; publicity is the spotlight they suffer for the recognition they crave.

The belief that life was hard and often its worst battles were fought in private, that it was possible to walk through fear and come out scorched but still breathing.