Writing is so hard. And then, sometimes, it is so bewilderingly easy..

Time, we like to say, cures all. But maybe the old saying doesn’t mean time heals. Time cures a secret in its brine, keeping it and finally, paradoxi….

Writing about why you write is a funny business, like scratching what doesn't itch. Impulses are mysterious, and explaining them must be done with mi….

In description we hear and feel the absorption of the author in the material. We sense the presence of the creator of the scene. .. This personal abs….

Memoirists wish to tell their mind, not their story..

Here, in memory, we live and die..

The world is full of mystery but it must not be choked with secrets: we must talk to one another..

A careful first draft is a failed first draft.

The artist's work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. And something terrible resides at the h….

People come and go in life, but they never leave your dreams. Once they're in your subconscious, they are immortal..

What is remembered is what becomes reality..

Poverty didn't necessarily engender an envy of wealth; sometimes it might beget a passion for decency..

I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know..

We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical..

Pondering was the highest vocation... Pondering was a special kind of thinking. It was not done in the mind, that chilly place, but in the heart, whe….

Planes are my foxhole. I'm always on my knees in them..

In memory each of us is an artist: each of us creates..

The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, b….

Looking repeatedly into the past, you do not necessarily become fascinated with your own life, but rather with the phenomenon of memory..

A peculiarity of the American historical sensibility allows us to be proud of great-grandfathers (or even grandfathers) who lived in crushing poverty….

Memory is, first, a captivating mystery..