My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.

I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.

When you think of things that influenced your life, Mother Goose influenced more people than almost any other thing, the rhythms of those poems. Everything after that was a bare imitation of some of those mysterious and materialistic poems.

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.

That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.

In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.