Death is just the last scene of the last act. - Joyce Carol Oates

I had forgotten that time wasn't fixed like concrete but in fact was fluid as sand, or water. I had forgotten that even misery can end.

I always instruct my students to write a great deal. Write a journal. Take notes. Write when you are feeling wretched, when your mind is about to break down...who knows what will float up to the surface? I am an unashamed believer in the magical powers of dreams; dreams enhance us. Even nightmares may be marketable — there is something to be said for the conscious, calculating exorcism of nightmares, if they give to us such works as those of Dostoyevsky, Celine,and Kafka. So the most important thing is to write, and to write nearly every day, in sickness and in health. In a while, in a few weeks or a few years, you can always make sense of that jumble of impressions...or perhaps it will suddenly reveal its sense to you.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.