My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.

Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.

With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.

Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed.

Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not.

And though some days it is very hard, I try not to live for the future. And I try not to dream of the past.

He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing.

The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th centurys first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

Invest your evaporating life and reap greatness.

Be awesome! Be a book nut!

In order to get to heaven, Jesus said that you must be converted. I didn’t say it—Jesus said it!

I told you. . .you belong in a castle.

Man's real genius and knowledge remains preserved in books

Know everything you can about what you're doing

To reject revelational epistemology is to commit yourself to defending the truth of autonomous epistemology.

In Leon's account of his life, no-one was mean-spirited, no-one schemed or lied or betrayed; everyone was celebrated at least in some degree... Leon turned out to be a spineless, grinning idiot.

My biggest project right now is trying to be a really great mom and learning how to balance family and career. I'm just trying to spend as much time with my family as I can.

Perhaps Harvard's greatest contribution to our nation is its requirement that its on-leave professors who want to keep their crimson seats must return from Washington after 24 months.