your soul needs to be lonely so that its strangest elements can moil about, curl and growl and jump, fail and get triumphant, all inside you. Sociable people have the most trouble hearing their unconscious. They have trouble getting rid of clichés because clichés are sociable.

An essay is a work of literary art which has a minimum of one anecdote and one universal idea.

Unlike lions and dogs, we are a dissenting animal. We need to dissent in the same way that we need to travel, to make money, to keep a record of our time on earth and in dream, and to leave a permanent mark. Dissension is a drive, like those drives.

No work of literature is the product of only one or two conscious ideas. A story is mysteriously dense of meaning.

Emily was feeling the elation of conscientious hosts when they can temporarily escape a ubiquitous houseguest.

It is very difficult to teach navigation theory to someone who clings to the shore.

The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforcement of collective wisdom.