And so we beat on, books against the critics, borne back ceaslessly into rewrites.

Exploration was for those with a measure of peasant blood, those with big thighs and thick ankles who could take punishment as they took bread and salt, on every inch of flesh and spirit.

It was astonishing to think that life had once been the sum of her current love-affairs. It was now the sum of her current problems.

I talk with the authority of failure.

Is your generation so soft that they talk of going to pieces if life doesn't always present itself in terms of beautiful, easy decisions?

She shut her eyes and he could see that the lids were trembling. Dear little Dot, life is so damned hard. She was crying upon his shoulder. So damned hard, so damned hard, he repeated aimlessly; it just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does. Frantic

Professor Dohmler raised himself like a legless man mounting a pair of crutches.

Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything.

The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.

If you start your own thing, you can learn a lot really fast from doing things wrong.

See failures as learning experiences, not character faults.

I feel like I fell short in Rio.