“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.”

“Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautif...”

“I dream that someone in space says to me: So let us rush, then, to see the world. It is shaped like an egg, covered with seas and continents, warmed and lighted by the sun. It has churches of indes...”

“I write to make sense of my life."-John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey”

“Like all bitter men, Flint knew less than half the story and was more interested in unloading his own peppery feelings than in learning the truth.”

“For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed...”

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.”

“The splendid thingabout falling apartsilently...is thatyou can start overas many timesas you like.”

“Love isn't something you find. Love is something that finds you.”

“True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.”

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

“Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.”

“People dont realize, he said, how important it is to wake up every morning with a song in your heart. J. Krishnamurti. The song stands for a sense of joy in existence, a joy that is free of any goo...”

“It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or star, or learn a verse to brighten anothers dull ...”