“it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.”

“Mothers particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truths direction, even those who believe that such a journey might ...”

“Faith is not a feeling, she says. It's a set of actions. By taking the actions, you demonstrate more faith than somebody who actually has experienced the rewards of prayer and so feels hope.”

“But what if I don't believe in God? It's like they've sat me in front of a mannequin and said, Fall in love with him. You can't will feeling. What Jack says issues from some still, true place that ...”

“Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.”

“But its a neurological fact that the scared self holds on while the reasoned one lets go. The adrenaline that let our ancestors escape the sabertooth tiger sears into the meat of our brains the ext...”

“Im a dot in the grand scheme of things. I dont matter, not even to the other dots.”

“Music is a writer's heartbeat.”

“Gratitude is the gateway to a positive life.”

“This has been done by masters of the trade and Garcia had taken in every stock situation with amazing powers of retention, but he had not put things together right and had used extraordinary discer...”

“Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserv...”

“(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this mans power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.”

“The books we read in childhood don't exist anymore; they sailed off with the wind, leaving bare skeletons behind. Whoever still has in him the memory and marrow of childhood should rewrite these bo...”