Sunday night meant, in the dark, wintry, rainy Midlands ... anywhere where two creatures might stand and squeeze together and spoon.... Spooning was a fine art, whereas kissing and cuddling are calf-processes.

There is a sixth sense, the natural religious sense, the sense of wonder.

And this is the final meaning of work: the extension of human consciousness. The lesser meaning of work is the achieving of self-preservation.

[Hawthorne''s] pious blame is a chuckle of praise all the while.

That is almost the whole of Russian literature: the phenomenal coruscations of the souls of quite commonplace people.

Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness and atonement — meaning atoneness, the state of being at one with the object.

They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.