I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.
She understood the nature of sin and knew that its most volatile form was the kind that did not recognize itself.
The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous t...
The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl.
Words are pretty, but anyone can talk. Pay attention to the people who perform.
A good movie had never once affected me in the same life-changing way a good book could. Books had the power to alter my view of the world forever. A great movie could change my perceptions for a day.
As his children, we were treated as some species of migrant workers who happened to be passing through. My father was the only person I ever knew who looked upon childhood as a dishonorable vocation o...
Hurt is a great teacher, maybe the greatest of all.
I blaze with a deep sullen magic, smell lust like a heron on fire; all words I form into castles then storm them with soldiers of air. What I seek is not there for asking. My armies are fit and well t...
I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don't mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.
If smallness was fortune, then I had come across a treasure, infinitesimal and beyond value. I felt lucky. You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The ob...
If your parents disapprove of you and are cunning with their disapproval, there will never come a new dawn when you can become convinced of your own value. There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The...
It all makes more sense when I'm out here alone, he smiled. I can talk myself into anything.
It would always be my burden, not that I lacked genius, but that I was fully aware of it.
No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into it...
They succeeded not only in making me normal but also in making me dull .
Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I...
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.
An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world in a way one has never considered before.
College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts.
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