Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in theuniverse, except that everyone else is still here.

When I’m doing something, I do work hard at it.

I think music is what language once aspired to be. Music allows us to face God on our own terms because it reaches beyond life.

He wanted to tell the baby that Paris was like a poem in stone.

Then, breathing slow, and almost deliberately, stops. But for a moment the old man doesn’t realize he is dead. He can feel Martin’s heart and mistakes it for his own.

I find hunger more interesting than accomplishment.

She said that one day they would be very old, that the world would be a different place, but it would always be their world, and that the time apart now would be a nightmare...

When you give something up, you need to fill the space where it used to be, and you understand the landscape in yourself a bit more.

Language allows us to reach out to people, to touch them with our innermost fears, hopes, disappointments, victories. To reach out to people we’ll never meet.It’s the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children...

Every moment is the paradox of now or never.

We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.

I was living in a large apartment with no furniture, just a typewriter, and because I had nothing else to do with my time, it made me take my writing seriously.

The love of aman is like a drop of color into something clear.

Everything that we love will, at some point, be taken away from us. If I think about everyone I love eventually being taken away from me by death, or simply by getting lost from each...

They help me understand myself better.

As a single parent, I had become tyrannical in order to survive, and anything I couldn’t control caused me enormous anxiety. As a naturally untidy, disorganised man who never made lists or kept receipts, morphing...

In the end I didn’t know who I was crying for, but it was something my body wanted to do, as though trying to digest grief.

In world mythology, there are countless examples of tragic characters whose greatest strength is also the source of their undoing. But the ancient Greeks and Romans also held the view that acceptance is the beginning...

The very best and the very worst of life will come from [their] ability to love strangers.

Like surgeons trying to save a life, the conservators and preservers at New York City museums dedicate themselves to ensuring the longevity of works of art for public view.

Every day is a masterpiece, even if it crushes you.

I once saved someone from drowning.

Love requires imagination more than experience.

I think John Coltrane is one of the great American heroes, like Abraham Lincoln and Emily Dickinson.

He realized this early on, and realized too that what people think are their lives are merely its conditions. The truth is closer than thought and lies buried in what we already know.

The most frustrating part of trying to direct everything is not that it alienates you from people who genuinely want to help, but that it’s actually impossible.

[I] read books because I love them, not because I think I should read them.

I think anyone can fall in love, if you’re open and you’re willing, but the real test is sustaining it after all the excitement has worn off.

Actually, years mean nothing. It’s what’s inside them.

Writers are often alone when they work. Hours pass in silence as one long moment; light fades as day turns back to face the coming night.

Love is also a violence, and cannot be undone.

Happy Birthday!” The smell of cake and the sound of feet under the table. I awake in a body that’s too big. I also dream in motion and sensation. My father’s boat and the snore...

I tried to convey to the boy how people’s lives are often altered by curved lines read slowly from paper, sand, or stone.

Single parenting is sometimes just a case of sitting around by yourself in mild despair, not knowing what to do.

The present grows within the boundaries of the past.

If you travel too often, you actually come face-to-face with what you’re trying to escape. I feel like when I travel alone, sometimes it’s like being locked in a hotel room with my own worst...

Anyone who is desperate or alone will agree there is comfort in routine.

Sometimes I wake up and lie still enough to hear a petal drop from the vase of flowers. Sometimes I lie awake and wish there was someone to hear my falling.

Royal Young’s writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.

This is why fashion is such a magical part of our lives, for it inspires our decisions without dictating them; it sets the theme but not the limits of our aesthetic.

Sometimes, language is the sound of longing

Shoes are a neutral blessing for us because feet generally aren’t regarded as a place where the battle for self-esteem is won or lost. Feet don’t change size when the body does through the natural...

When he smiles, they mostly look away. But Martin likes to think they carry his smile for a few blocks – that even the smallest gesture is something grand.

I was afraid of the sea when I was a girl. Someone said it went on forever and that frightened me. I wondered why my parents had chosen to live at the beginning and the...

Music helps us understand where we have come from but, more importantly, what has happened to us.

The joy of style lies not in how we look to other people, but in how we look to ourselves – and the most memorable and beautiful outfits are simply those that, in some rare...

The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.

Both my parents were very supportive of me in whatever I wanted to do.

But those who seek only reassurance from life will never be more than tourists—seeing everything and trying to possess what can only be felt.Beauty is the shadow of imperfection.

We all have different lives, Martin believes – but in the end probably feel the same things, and regret the fear we thought might somehow sustain us.