“I think most of us tell ourselves we don't want what we think we can't have just to make life bearable.”

“She said we all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.”

“We each have our own way of expressing ourselves. I just think that life gives us things, situations— people— to make us see how much we have to learn . . . how much we need to remember to stay humble and realize we are just like children. We don't know everything.”

“I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.”

“In modern society most of us don't want to be in touch with ourselves; we want to be in touch with other things like religion, sports, politics, a book - we want to forget ourselves. Anytime we have leisure, we want to invite something else to enter us, opening ourselves to the television and telling the television to come and colonize us.”

“I think the things we want most in life, the things we think will set us free, are not the thing we need.”