Life is that which - pressingly, persistently, unfailingly, imperially - interrupts.

He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.

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

The butterfly lures us not only because he is beautiful, but because he is transitory. The caterpillar is uglier, but in him we can regard the better joy of becoming.

Imagine an American Hans Christian Andersen, conceive of the Brothers Grimm living in Missouri, and you will approximate Howard Schwartz, a fable-maker and fable-gatherer seduced by the uncanny and the unearthly. In Lilith's Cave, he once again reaches into a magical cornucopia of folklore and fantasy and spreads before us, in enchanting language, the marvels and shocks of dybbuks, ghosts, demons, spirits, and wizards.

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

The trouble with happiness is that it never notices itself.