any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.

Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.

The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there'd be no show at all.

I don't like to make a distinction between the writer and the painter , finally , because I do both things anyway . Everybody's dreaming and trying to put down their dreams in the way that their hand knows best . I feel as much a unity , as much comradeship , with painters as I do writers .

One part of love is innocence One part of love is guilt One part the milk that in a sense Is soured as soon as spilt One part of love is sentiment One part of love is lust One part is the presentiment Of our return to dust

Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.

Often people who are wonderful with animals aren't always terribly good with human beings.