When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.

There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us.

I do try to write the way I think. But of course that all changes as soon as I put it into words.

To be useful was the best thing the old men ever hoped for themselves, and to be aimless was their worst fear.

I was always amazed, watching grownups, at the way they seemed to know what was to be done in any situation, to know what was the decent thing.

These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you’re making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.

I don’t know why solitude would be a balm for loneliness, but that is how it always was for me in those days,

A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine.

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.