You want to give him the book of his own life, the book that will locate him, parent him, arm him for the changes.

We always worry about the wrong things, don't we?

The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.

These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius.

We’d hoped for love of a different kind, love that knew and forgave our human frailty but did not miniaturize our grander ideas of ourselves.

A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they're so eager to get to the light on the other side.

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.