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

The planned sit-down reception is an artificial forum where one is presented with a limited number of persons with whom he can hold a conversation.

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.

She seemed to belong to that pagan, primitive kingdom of birds and forests where everything was infinitely abundant, wild, blooming, and royal in its perpetual decay, death, and rebirth; illicit and clashing with the human world.

Going around under an umbrella interferes with one's looking up at the sky.

I suppress in my prose any language which calls attention to itself.

Physical comfort has nothing to do with any other comfort.