Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn’t catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don’t.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of.

Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone.

In the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.

We make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies.

The self is also a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist.

I was being cured of soldiering on endlessly: my job was now to be still, which had become almost easy at last.

Always, just beyond all these things, was the silver sea, the lace border around all land like the silence around sounds or the unknowns beyond all knowledge.

Disenchantment is the blessing of becoming yourself.

To tell a story is always to translate the raw material into a specific shape, to select out of the boundless potential facts those that seem salient.

All he ever knew of her was who he saw every day. All I am is who I am every day. All anyone is to anyone is a series of days.

All attempts, then, for mortification of any lust, without an interest in Christ, are vain.

...the dead, being wiser than the living, know freedom is always better than revenge.

Things put in the wrong place have found a new place.

People who are chronically tardy never understand the many ways in which they screw up the schedules of people who are punctual and 'normal'.

I never thought of being a performer, never thought of being a singer, never thought of being a photographer. It's just the trajectory of my work. I go to the medium that serves the vision.

There is nothing that art cannot express.

Not to discount my music, but I'm always suspicious of the music that I make on some level, as to how valid it is. Or maybe not "valid," but how important.

I think by the time I finished college I was calling myself a professional because I was, you know. I was making a living playing music.

Have patience. Stocks don't go up immediately.