When you see the ugliness behind the tears of another person, it makes you take a closer look at your own.

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don't buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.

It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.

Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible.

I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.

At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come to realize this after they are in the nursing home.