Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.

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.

The world did not have me in mind; it had no mind. It was a coincidental collection of things and people, of items, an I myself was one such item...the things in the world did not necessarily cause my overwhelming feelings; the feelings were inside me, beneath my skin, behind my ribs, withing my skull. They were even, to some extent, under my control.

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world.