The idea of being a novelist is really romantic, but it's kind of the same as being president of the United States - it's not gonna happen.

. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we feel superior to those who have the sense to live elsewhere.

I believe that love is the choice we make to raise ourselves and others to the highest planes of existence.

I don't think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.

The most important story we'll ever write in life is our own-not with ink, but with our daily choices.

So often the pain of our life is no more than a reminder to take our hand off the stove.

There are far too many people for us to think about each of them during our short stay on earth—like the thousands of books in a library we haven’t time to read in an afternoon. But this is no excuse to cease browsing. For every now and then, we find that one book that reaches us deep inside and introduces us to ourselves. And, in someone else’s story, we come to understand our own.