The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed.

Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure.

We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.

You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.

What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.