True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world

It is hard to sever the cords that tie us to our slavery and leave intact those that bind us to ourselves.

Planes are my foxhole. I'm always on my knees in them.

The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes pilgrimage. Willingness: to hear the tales along the way, to make the casual choices of travel, to acquiesce even to boredom. That's pilgrimage -- a mind full of journey.

We store in memory only images of value. The value may be lost over the passage of time, but that's the implacable judgment of feeling.

In memory each of us is an artist: each of us creates.

Pondering was the highest vocation... Pondering was a special kind of thinking. It was not done in the mind, that chilly place, but in the heart, where the real mystery of intelligence - intuition - rather than thought lay catlike and feminine, ready to pounce.