Even if things are as bad as they could possible be, and as meaningless, then matters of truth are themselves indifferent; we may as well please our sensibilities and, with as much spirit as we can muster, go out with a buck and a wing.

Painters work from the ground up. The latest version of a painting overlays earlier versions, and obliterates them. Writers, on the other hand, work from left to right. The discardable chapters are on the left.

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.

Push it. examine all things intensely and relentlessly.

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

You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.

I saw in a blue haze all the world poured flat and pale between the mountains