Life's passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.

We're all hoping that Trump doesn't get our world on his terms because there won't be anything of it left. Trump is a true psychopath, a psychopath in the way that tragedy becomes tragedy.

Theres a lot to be said for doing what youre not supposed to do, and the rewards of doing what youre supposed to do are more subtle and take longer to become apparent, which maybe makes it less attractive. But your life is the blueprint you make after the building is built.

Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.

They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents' faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis?

I think that's the thing that memoir can do more than anything it does; it testifies and bears witness to the existence of people whose lives, pleasures and virtues would never have been testified to without my having done it. That makes me really glad.

Most things don't stay the way they are very long.