“How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one’s nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.”

The camera creates a magical transformation. It’s not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. …

A new dog never replaces an old dog; it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs, your heart is very big.

Photographs are the most curious indicators of reality.

Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.

It’s easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.

Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don’t feel any experience is complete unless it’s recorded.

The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner.

The trick is not how much pain you feel – but how much joy you feel

Why does life need evidence of life?

What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.

The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.

Motherhood cannot finally be delegated.

A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart.

Before things are written down they don’t exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

I feel really assured by the fact that the women I have loved I have loved for always.

The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.

I feel like I’m a veteran at this now.

When you win a race like this the feeling is very, very good. There have been times when I have been flat-out to finish sixth, but you can’t see that from the outside.

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

If I find something and feel as though I can contribute to [it] in a way and feel I’m in it, whatever that means.