I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.

why did I have to keep learning this same thing over and over?

Ecstasy, I think, is a soul's response to the waves holiness makes as it nears.

Having chosen this foolishness, I was a free being. How could the world ever stop me, how could I betray myself, if I was not afraid?

We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall.

The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.

There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it?