"Our tears fatten upon our memories of..." - Quote by John Updike

“Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.”

“My father taught only math.”

“Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.”

“Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.”

“I'll never be happy. I believe I'll die alone. I would want it that way. I've been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I'm really lost, but I'm trying to find myself. I'm really a sad, pathetic case. My whole life has been a waste. I've been a failure. I just want to escape.”

“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have a feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever I can.”

“A well-fashioned day - with a beginning and an end, a purpose and a content, a color and a character, a feel and a texture - takes it place among the many and becomes a valuable memory and treasure. At midnight the winged messengers come and gather up all these pieces and take them off to wherever the mosaic is kept. And surely, on occasion, one messenger says to another, 'Wait 'til you see this one.'”

“The strongest memory is not as strong as the weakest ink.”

“A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.”