Still, we're less betrayed by others, it seems, than by our own hopes and dreams.

He was big, that Sid. He was a force, a character, and I wondered fleetingly if Sally and I would ever seem as big to our offspring as Sid had seemed to us.

When you're in college you haven't had that much life. Parents, school, assorted youth activities—that's about it.

The present is all we have, yet it is the one thing we will never learn to hold in our hands.

Miracle: to love more with an irreparable heartache

For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short.

Pain is the best instructor, but no one wants to go to his class.

I've realized that with each novel I seem to set out a kind of puzzle for myself. And I am never sure in the process of writing a first draft how it's all going to turn out.

In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly. It might not be as early as 2013 but it will be soon, much earlier than 2040.

Children ought to be led to honorable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows and ill treatment.

Let us leave hurry to slaves.

Nature is honest, we aren't; we embalm our dead.

I see you have returned, my love; and your mood is as dark as ever. Did your soldiers not adore you to your complete satisfaction?