Now every mortal has pain and sweat is constant, but if there is anything dearer than being alive, it's dark to me. We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth-- we call it life. We know no other. The underworld's a blank and all the rest just fantasy.

They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.

You remember too much," my mother said to me recently. "Why hold onto all that?" And I said, "where can I put it down?

What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.

I never had much education in English poetry as such.

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

Philosophers say man forms himself in dialogue.