Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

Fate and victory shift ... now this way, now that way -- like a line of unarmored men under a hail of enemy arrows.

Nothing helps an artist's career more than a little death and obscurity.

Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.

You treat violence as an aberration ... when in truth it is the norm. It is the very essence of the human condition.

She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things - the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.

The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer