What do I believe that I deserve in this life?
You make some big grandoise decision about what you need to do, or who you need to be, and then circumstances arise that immediately reveal to you how little you understood about yourself.
But the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort.
Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.
Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon?
Parla Come Mangi’ – It is a common way to say ‘be simple’, ‘don’t try to be rhetorical’ literaly: ’speak the way you eat.
Look – I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch?
Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.
Let your conscience be your guide.
One of these poems I wrote after having been here only a month. The other, I wrote this morning. In the space between the two poems, I have found acres of grace.
Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship – a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.
Who loves you most? Who loves you best? Who thinks of you when others rest?
It’s not enough for me to just hear about something or read about something, I wanna know it in my bones.
I am determined to make the most of this life that I have, damn it – it’s that kind of stubbornness I think we all need more of.
I believe that – if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression – that you should take on this work like a holy calling.
It has never been easy for me to understand why people work so hard to create something beautiful, but then refuse to share it with anyone, for fear of criticism.
To show a longing for anything that one cannot have, for instance, is not a clever position.
It used to be that god was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other.
I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along.
Your tears are my prayers.