There is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter.

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.

...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living.

Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.

It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time not to know anything about it.

There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.