Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.

Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.

Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.

The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.

Mine the long night The secret place Where lovers meet In long embrace In purple dark In silvered kiss Forget the world And grasp your bliss

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.