Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

We live in all we seek.

if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

I woke at intervals until . . . the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not.

It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.