“She looks at the swings, and I can see shes imagining what theyd look like if the kids werent there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away,...”

“Sometimes people are beautiful.Not in looks.Not in what they say.Just in what they are.”

“Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.”

“Why cant the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesnt care, I finally answer, and I know Im right. Its like Ive been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask.”

“As we walk back, it feels like the city is engulfing us. Adrenalin still pours through our veins. Sparks flow through to our fingers. We've still been running in the mornings, but the city's differ...”

“...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.”

“Another decent possibility my critics implicitly deny is that of work as a giftThey assumeand this is the orthodox assumption of the industrial economythat the only help worth giving is not given a...”

“Happiness doesn't result from what we get, but from what we give.”

“You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”