You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

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.

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

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

Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope: There is a life worth living where history is still taking place; there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized.

If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.

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