...[I am] utterly entranced, at times, with the mere fact that there are other people, and that they experience themselves as the primary center of consciousness just as I do. That fact alone...Well, that fact alone is staggering.

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

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.

If Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective; each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation.

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.