A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

What hidden, hoarded longings there are in all of us.

You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

It occurs to me that just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans being in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.

Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.