“...the words make our silences easier--they're the current that runs under them.”

“But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps its best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself...”

“It seems we need someone to know us as we are--with all we have done--and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone's sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please. ...for......”

“But even then I knew how it was going to be, I could feel the coming silence in the long, poisonous pauses that expanded as the night progressed.”

“And I was remembering that time in our lives together, the time of those ritual walks. I was remembering the way it feels at just that moment when you begin to turn, when youre poised exactly betwe...”

“This was all of it, no doubt, the strange passing feeling that had come to me in the boat. Age. Vanity. The impossibility of accepting the new versions of oneself that life kept offering. The impos...”

“Dont ever let desperation take the seat of inspiration in you! Always live inspired no matter what! For though something might be wrong somewhere, something is always right somewhere! If you have l...”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with th...”

“On the one hand you had people constantly fighting Hell; on the other, you had people constantly fighting Hell on earth.”

“None of us can choose where we shall love...”

“There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.”

“Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same ...”