hope, as Chesterton said, is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate. - Anne Lamott

writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. that thing you had to force yourself to do — the actual act of writing — turns out to be the best part. it's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony.

No matter how people mess with you or let you down, or how you let yourself down, a good book means that when you get in bed that night, you have a good hour. I feel like you pay all day for that hour. That's what books mean to me. I can open this two-dimensional, flat white page with squiggly little black marks on them, and someone has created this world that you're going to enter into ...

By the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards.