From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them.

Brothers naturally invite comparison.

Two months ago my mother died. She made, as the expression goes, a good death.

When night comes on in a room lit by kerosene, any flicker of the flame can give the sense that darkness is about to triumph.

A gust of wind doesn't suddenly bang a door open. A clock doesn't chime. The phone doesn't ring. Yet in the next instant the stillness breaks as if it is crystal.

With so much unknown in this life, how little it takes for a face, a grove of trees, an outcropping of stone to become familiar.

Susannah continued. "If and when I go off slow dancing in the ever after, I don't want to look like I've been stuck in a hospital room my whole life. I at least want to be tan.

Just because a door appears closed it does not mean that it is locked - nor that it will not open with the right heart, call or touch

I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works.

The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The willingness to learn is a choice.

One man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to loose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you.

It's wonderful when music is intellectually stimulating. But ultimately it has to be a visceral experience.

I do not like candid pictures. They are so unattractive.

God has not always answered my prayers. If He had, I would have married the wrong man -- several times!

There is darkness in every heart.

That was the very centre of his genius - he invented things that anyone could have thought of, and men who can invent things that anyone could have thought of are very rare men.