“I'm a survivor, " I said. But I didn't think that claim would carry much weight in an obituary.”

“There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer because you have the liber...”

“In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another. Plea...”

“I had never seen such sorrow; it appalled me. And I was even more appalled by her attempts to overcome it, because they so plainly, pathetically failed and in failing opened up a view of the world ...”

“Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story hed led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering...”

“In a world where the most consequential things happen by chance, or from unfathomable causes, you don't look to reason for help. You consort with mysteries... They have been killed in place of you ...”

“When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.”

“If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

“sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”

“Men work together,' I told him from the heart,'Whether they work together or apart.”

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”

“To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.”

“The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.”

“The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them.”