Crippled and crazy, we hobble toward the finish line, pen in hand.

The truth is that personality inevitably bleeds into all forms of our intellectual life. We all extrapolate from our own lives in order to understand the world.

Depression is when you think there's nothing to be done. Fortunately I always think there's something to be done.

That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight.

Whenever I sign books, I get this line over and over again from men: "I don't read fiction, but my wife does. Would you sign the book to her?" What are those men doing there? And where are their wives?

Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind.

There is no reason we should expect young children to enter the nocturnal darkness of sleep and dreams without help.