That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

I swear that woman had a previous career as a death-hunter selling tragic ballads down around the Seven Dials, " said Will. "And I do wish she wouldn't sing about poisoning just after we've eaten.

Oh Lion in a peculiar guise, Sharp Roman road to Paradise, Come eat me up, I'll pay thy tollWith all my flesh, and keep my soul.

being together… it will never be right. Thought it sure as hell feels like it could. We’d result to train wrecks. We’d cause whirlwinds. We’d start wildfires.

Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

When to elect there is but one Tis Hobson's Choice take that or none.

Not only is it harder to be a man, it is also harder to become one.

If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?

It was a sad thing. I don't know how he learned that.

The Universe in a Nutshell