There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. I invite you to go sit under that tree by your street.

Almost all of my many passionate interests, and my many changes of mind, came through books. Books prompted the many vows I made to myself.

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.

I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.

There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it?

If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.

Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe.