The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.

And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.

You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.

You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister; you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.

Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.

so my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her rose garden she did not want to appear underdressed. if the dresses got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. when my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, "what? and have those people at the cleaners what i was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?" from my grandmother i learned that logic is relative.