This book is the book you have just read. It’s done.

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change.

But there was a kitten on my pillow, and it was purring in my face and vibrating gently with every purr, and, very soon, I slept.

Books were safer than other people anyway.

Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.

I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.

Words save our lives, sometimes.

You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it.

They were not my friends, after all. They were just the people I went to school with.

The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.

You were my single greatest adventure.

Informed by our sad experience of history, we require nothing short of a foundation for lasting democracy.

Sure, I can sing a country song, but so can a lot of people.

How short is human life! the very breath Which frames my words accelerates my death.

Prayer is to the spiritual life what the beating of the pulse and the drawing of the breath are to the life of the body.

While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.

Actually, your soul and mine are the same. We appear and disappear with each other.

To some people, I am a kind of Merlin who takes lots of crazy chances, but rarely makes mistakes.

I heard people say, 'Why would he want to do this?' My answer is 'Why not?' It is what I love. It's what I know.