Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

For my true thoughts have spent more time in your company than in anyone else's, these last two or three months, and where my thoughts are, there am I, in truth".

Good writing is always new.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….

I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.