After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.

Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.

The other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between wrong, more wrong, and as wrong as you can get.

Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal.

I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.