I’m a survivor, ” I said. But I didn’t think that claim would carry much weight in an obituary.

We are made to persist.that’s how we find out who we are.

The beauty of a fragment is that it still supports the hope of brilliant completeness.

a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it’s why you want to become a writer —...

In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another....

In a world where the most consequential things happen by chance, or from unfathomable causes, you don’t look to reason for help. You consort with mysteries… They have been killed in place of you –...

A mi la literatura m’ha canviat, m’ha donat una profunditat de consciència que no tenia. M’ha ajudat a veure el món d’un altra manera, m’ha fet més gran el cor. I aquesta passió la sento...

Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present,...

Why were Jack and his brother digging post holes? A fence there would run parallel to the one that already enclosed the farmyard. The Welches had no animals to keep in or out – a...

Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he’d led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity – its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering...

I’ve allowed some of these points to stand, because this is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell. But I have done my best to make it tell a truthful...