"I can never remember the name of anywhere I've ever been. I will say that I've eaten at a ton of GREAT places. I just don't remember their names. I'm not that guy."

“The trick is finding a person whose flaws don't drive you crazy...you know...someone whose flaws you can live with...someone who can stand your flaws, too.”

“I weaned myself on the nostalgia equivalent of methadone (less addictive, less obvious, less likely to make you crazy): missing what I had never had.”

“And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.”

Source : Jennifer Donnelly (2015). “A Gathering Light”, p.164, Bloomsbury Publishing

“Very few can be trusted with an education.”

Source : Louise Imogen Guiney (1897). “Patrins, to which is added An inquirendo into the wit & other good parts of His late Majesty King Charles the Second”

“Destiny isn't immutable. You can change your fate. But I'd say the only way to do it is with hard, intelligent work and long-term dedication to a goal.”

“I'm a biographer; I can live with a little hyperbole.”

“With kiting, you have to land a trick, and in that instant you know whether you won or lost - I knew I could become the best in the world if I trained”

“It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.”