It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.

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

Tonight I walked around the pond scaring frogs; a couple of them jumped off, going, in effect, eek, and most grunted, and the pond was still. But one big frog, bright green like a poster-paint frog, didn't jump, so I waved my arm and stamped to scare it, and it jumped suddenly, and I jumped, and then everything in the pond jumped, and I laughed and laughed.

Doing something does not require discipline. It creates its own discipline - with a little help from caffeine.

Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand - that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.

We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence.

When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.