Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding . . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.

Novels written with film contracts in mind have a faint but unmistakable, and ruinous, odor.

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.

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

About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.

Cruelty is a mystery, and a waste of pain.