I do think that something of the effect I have on people is to put everything on an edge where they're both infatuated with a kind of charmingness happening in the person or in the writing, and also flatly terrified by a revelation or acceptance of revelation that's almost happening, never quite totally happening.

Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me. Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.

[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.

Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.

The self forms at the edge of desire, and a science of self arises in the effort to leave that self behind.

He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.

Caught between the tongue and the taste.