“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”

“The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.”

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”

“How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmaresif there seemed any danger of their coming true!”

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”

“What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to...”

“[C]oncepts of dying in to a heaven or hell seem a good deal more political than spiritual. (124)”

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. ...”