To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

...what he told himself on those sea-soaked nights...Others joined in and it was discovered that every light had a story-no, every light was a story. And the flashes themselves were the stories going out over the waves, as markers and guides and comfort and warning.

You had once asked me if I was afraid of death.

I said I was afraid of not living.

I don’t want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.