Image: Per A.J. Andersson, CC BY-SA 4.0
34 quotes
American author
“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”
"The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people."
on War
"Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart."
on Resilience
"The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in a hellhole."
on Courage
"Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost."
on Philosophy
"The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt."
on Art
"For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power."
on Writing
"For writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy, freedom."
"The worst cynicism: a belief in luck."
"We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it."
"Only when men are connected to large universal goals are they really happy-and one result of their happiness is a rush of creative activity."
on Happiness
"It's where we go and what we do when we get there that tells us who we are."
on Identity
"Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst."
on Hope
"It isn't the subjects we write about but the seriousness and subtlety of our expression that determines the worth of or effort."
"The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives."
on Communication
". . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful."
"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” —"
on Empathy
"A fear of the unknown: what was that called?Worse yet: a fear of the known."
on Fear
"There are some secrets so toxic you can’t share. Especially if you love who it is you’d have to share with."
on Love
"Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child."
on Truth
"Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there's no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them."
