The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in a hellhole.

It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we really are.

The innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life.

It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.

And I’m drawn to failure. I often write about it, and I’m sympathetic with it, I think, because I feel I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.