In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again.

God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us

I do believe that enduring geological features are important, though I don't think I can be clear about exactly why.

What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I'm interested in how ordinary people live their lives

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia