Plans can be like a winged horse, but their execution plods along pulling carts.

Books have always been to me like a kind of embalmed mind. The dead may be scattered, and who can find them, but their voices live in the library.

Charm is the enchanted dart, light and subtle as a hummingbird. But it is deceptive in one thing: like a sense of humor, if you think you've got it, you probably haven't.

I wonder if we climb to heaven over the ruins of many cherished schemes.

...appetite turns common food into the fare of kings.

The way of surviving is to find meaning in suffering.

A personal offense is like a scratch on a phonograph record. I couldn't move my thoughts beyond my pain. It kept repeating, as if I were stuck within its grooves. There was only one way to play beyond it. I had to forgive them, so my heart could take its form again.