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

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.

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.

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.

The events that occur in my life are workout situations. They are there for my benefit so I can become strong and gain wisdom and information by working my way through those situations.

You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow and its beauty.

When you sit tranquilly, you set a great example to the people who rush around in panic and thus you show the crazy waves the beauty of being a calm lake!

I went on to Harvard and got very interested in computers and studying the earth's landscape.

I knew with Snape I was working as a double agent, as it turns out, and a very good one at that.

I was in a bar the other night, hopping from barstool to barstool, trying to get lucky, but there wasn't any gum under any of them.

The only things standing between you and the compassionate, wise, and creative person you want to be are matters of choice. Your choice. No one can occupy your generosity except you.

One day I will rule the world with a goat by my side!

Even if I'm playing a superhero, it has to be steeped in reality.

The Americans, of course, are quite dotty with hospitality.