When I first read the words 'introvert' and 'extrovert' when I was 10, I thought I was both.

Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a word to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and delight, the canary that sings on the skull.

What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch--with an electric hiss and cry--this speckled mineral sphere, our present world.

What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.

The courage of children and beasts is a function of innocence.

I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.

What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?