All poets and story tellers alive today make a single brotherhood; they are engaged in a single work, picturing our human life. Whoever pictures life as he sees it, reassembles in his own way the details of existence which affect him deeply, and so creates a spiritual world of his own.

And who is any of us, that without starvation he can go through the kingdoms of starvation?

In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in.

When I meet a new person, I am on the lookout for signs of what he or she is loyal to. It is a preliminary clue to the sense of belonging, and hence of his or her humanity.

A gang is the same as a wolf pack; gang members do not use their energies in friendship with one another, for they do not know what friendship is. If they are united, it is by the common bond of a desire to attack their world.

I am no theologian. I am a layman. I am among those who are preached to, and who listen. It is not for me to preach. I should not willingly forego being a listener, a man who reads the Gospels and then listens to what others say that our Lord meant. But sometimes a listener speaks out, and listens to his own voice.

A man's motive in the small actions of daily life, like resting a moment on his pitchfork in the sun and listening intently, may be the most important thing about that man.