... Remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

You aren't sick & unhappy only alive & stuck with it.

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out.

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

I suppose it's everyone's fate to be reduced to quaintness by those younger than themselves.

What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.

Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.