The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.

Chance was to work in the garden, where he would care for plants and grasses and trees which grew there peacefully. He would be as one on them: quiet, open hearted in the sunshine and heavy when it rained.

It's not that you aren't likable. On the contrary. You are. It's just that one wonders if you haven't made a career out of being so likable.

Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird

If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one.

I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.

I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.