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

I would like to live. . . open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.

He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars.

I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?

Then why did you tell me?