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.

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

To be alive at all is to have scars.