Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled.

To feel alone is to be alone.

I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.

It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.

You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.

I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.

With writing, we have second chances.

I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.

The market changes faster than school can teach. Don´t lean on degrees.

They do everything to make you fail

The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures

Never, for fear of feeble man, restrain your witness.

As far as which writers embody this form of gentle power - Tobias Wolff, for sure. His persona and his writing both share an easy, capacious confidence that says he has faith in his readers.

You are good. But it is not enough just to be good. You must be good for something.

I don't think I came out of anybody. I think I developed out of the influences I described in My Dark Places. American history, L.A. of the 1950s. I'm comfortable with that.

Creativity isn't magic. It's achievable.

Artists don't always know. Almost every song I ever recorded that was a hit at the majors that the promotional people picked I didn't think it would be a hit. I was wrong every time!