... if one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Absence becomes the greatest Presence.

I have never written a book that was not born out of a question I needed to answer for myself.

What is destructive is impatience, haste, expecting too much too fast.

True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.

It feels a long way up and down from zero.

In the country of pain we are each alone.