I have never planned to have babies by a certain age.
The worst mistakes I've made have been the ones directed by sweet-natured hopefulness.
Every relationship has at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there's always that day. That day is always in your possession. That's the day you remember. You get old and you think: well, at least I had that day. It happened once. You think all the variables might just line up again. But they don't. Not always. I once talked to a woman who said, "Yeah, that's the day we had an angel around.
When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.
Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.
Short story characters, mine anyway, are usually driven by impulse, not so much by their histories and the choices that they have to make.
In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to you psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely.
Perhaps the two most valuable and satisfactory products of American civilization are the librarian on the one hand and the cocktail in the other.
I grew up with a Christmas tree, I'm going to stay with a Christmas tree.
The only sin is mediocrity.
It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.