No complaining about how hard it is to write, we are all so, so lucky to write, to sit down, inside, and write words on paper. There is no greater freedom, no greater good, nothing that brings more joy.

Nothing's as dangerous as power with impunity.

Real soup is to the body what peace is to the soul.

People think that they will sit down and produce the great American novel in one sitting. It doesn't work that way. This is a very patient and meticulous work, and you have to do it with joy and love for the process, not for the outcome.

...memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.

When love exists, nothing else matters, not life’s predicaments, not the fury of the years, not a physical winding down or scarcity of opportunity.

Boredom, Timothy Duane assured me, is nothing more than anger without passion.