The mind has a complex life that can seem quite autonomous - dreams, obsessions, unwilled memory are all instances of this.

Then there is the matter of my mother's abandonment of me. Again, this is the common experience. They walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. The only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.

There are worries that seem to me sustained by the love of worry. For example, that people are reading from screens, or listening to recorded books. Why scold the impulse to enjoy language and narrative in whatever form it takes?

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers.

I can’t believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great part of the substance of human life.

The great truth that is too often forgotten is that it is in the nature of people to do good to one another.