Synthesizing Artistic Delight

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies.

And yet sometimes she worried about what those musty old books were doing to her.

Meaning is not in things but in between them.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

Every hour wounds. The last one kills.

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.

Gratitude has a short half-life.

Nothing is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.

Literature above all is a mode of transport. It lifts you up out of whatever situation you’re in and it puts you down somewhere else. It fucking escapes you. That’s what literature is.

Stories are the only things that give any meaning to our pointless, shapeless lives.

How strange we are. How different we are from how we think we are. We fall out of love only to fall in love with a duplicate of what we've left, never understanding that we love what we love and that it doesn't change.

How deep the darkness of the heart which longs for control.

Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project.

The flip side of being a person who never fails at anything is that you never do anything you could fail at. You never do anything risky. There’s a certain essential lack of courage among people who seem to be good at everything.

Seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime.