My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

...I rejoiced in the flaws that made her more real to me

That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.

Some writers say they cannot write in front of a window; many say they cannot function without almost perfect quiet. A writer with only two hours a day can write in the back of an open truck on the Interstate.

No intellect is needed to see those figures who wait beyond the void of death - every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright, wrapped in authority older than the universe. They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions. Rightly we feel our lives guided by them, and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them, the builders of the unimaginable, the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.