Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them. Stretch it as thin as the temple flesh of an ailing woman and still it serves to ache the bone and to move the bone about; and in like manner the night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in a torment. We will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.

The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.

The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.

New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.

There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation--purity's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?

I couldn't ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection. Your love would never bridge a gap; it wouldn't even fill up the hole that the mice came through.

Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature.