There is a passion for perfection which you will rarely see fully developed; but you may note this fact, that in successful lives it is never wholly lacking.

Indifference may not wreck a man's life at any one turn, but it will destroy him with a kind of dry-rot in the long run.

I think everyone's pretty much the same underneath. The collective unconscious is a real thing. There's only a few emotions, and we all have them. There's, like, seven emotions. So personal is universal. Everyone experiences confusion, joy and pain, just in different forms.

It wasn't until I was an adult reader that I began to fathom the influence of fairy tales on writers I was in love with over the years, from Louisa May Alcott to Bernard Malamud to John Cheever to Anne Frank to Joy Williams.

I feel there's a constant sense of happiness and gratefulness in me.

When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things - not the great occasions - that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.