The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.

A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.