Time isn't made of anything. It is an abstraction. Just a meaning that we impose upon motion.

Making is always a slightly hopeful thing because once you've made something, it'll - the world will be different.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I'll be leaving; this won't last. It's a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I'm just sad.

Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.

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

It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.

The Greek language seems different than other languages. I'm not the only person to think this. Usually, I come up with some kind of dopey metaphor for why it's different. But it seems, somehow, more original, more like being in the morning of language.