When something ought to be true then it proves to be a very powerful truth.

Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.

I think the essence of family is that you have to agree to it, and then supply, out of your imagination and capacity for loyalty, the contents of it.

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.

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

The locus of the human mystery is perception of this world. From it proceeds every thought, every art.

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected — an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows.