Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.

What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge.

The best way to find things out is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun - bang it goes

Happiness is like coke — something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.

Knowledge is an affair of symbols and is, all too often, a hindrance to wisdom, the uncovering of the self from moment to moment