In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.

In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

Look now — in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst sin we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, 'Use it well, use it wisely.' We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.

Only through immitation do we develop toward originality.

To be alive at all is to have scars.