Theirs is the mystery of continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection.

He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars.

Old memories are very easy to get except that once you write about something you've destroyed it.

Let the grass die. I let almost all of my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There are all kinds of ways to live. You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls.

It's a little silly to finally learn how to write at this age. But I long ago realized I was secretly sincere.

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

I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive.