When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.

To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself, 'There could be more...things we don't understand,' is not to damn knowledge....It is to permit yourself an extraordinary, freedom: someone else does not have to be wrong in order that you might be right...This tolerance for mystery invigorates the imagination; and it is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.

The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you