Santorini, Greece - 2006
1. “A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.”
2. “A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.”
3. “A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.”
4. "A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself."
5. ”Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.”
6. “Groan and forget it.”
7. “If you like a book, maybe you'd better not meet the writer because she's only what's left over; most of her has gone into the book.”
8. “If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.”
9. “Irony in writing is a technique for increasing reader self-approval.”
10. “I seem to be the only person in the world who doesn't mind being pitied. If you love me, pity me.”
11. "It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own."
12. “I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.”
13. “Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.”
14. “Solitude, like a drug, can be addictive. The more you have it, the more you want it.”
15. “The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes.”
16. “The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.”
17. ”There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as do exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft.”
18. "To meet at all, one must open ones eyes to another; and there is no true conversation no matter how many words are spoken, unless the eye, unveiled and listening, opens itself to the other."
19. “We are each of us angels with only one wing, to fly we need only embrace each other.”
20. “We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.”
21. “We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.”
22. “What voice can equal the voices of solitude?”
23. “Writing fiction is an almost certain way of making a fool of yourself.”
24. “Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.”
25. “Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers having had their hell on earth, will escape punishment hereafter.”
26. “Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.”
