I would like to live. . . open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar,and we can't beat it open. ...The fixed is a world without fire--dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus.

I would like to live. . . open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel.

Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurling shuttle.