It is the function of a liberal university not to give right answers, but to ask right questions.

To be any sort of competent writer one must keep one's psychological distance from the supreme artists.

The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters.

I would distinguish between a visitor and a pilgrim: both will come to a place and go away again, but a visitor arrives, a pilgrim is restored. A visitor passes through a place; the place passes through the pilgrim.

Why do men carry guns and build prison camps, when the nurturing earth is made for freedom?

When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.