A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly; they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying one thing and being another; here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is unmasked.

It’s all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

If we could learn even a little to like ourselves, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar.

Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.