We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives

Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.

My brain is sending poison to my heart.

Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven

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.

No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin - only four years older than I am - everything, or what little I could discover about him.

I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write.