Who and of what import were the men whose bones bulk the Great Wall, the thirty million Mao starved, or the thirty million children not yet five who die each year now? Why, they are the insignificant others, of course; living or dead, they are just some of the plentiful others...And you? To what end were we billions of oddballs born?

I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.

For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning?

Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.

It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar,and we can't beat it open. ...The fixed is a world without fire--dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread.

What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.

The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail.