Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

I am sometimes visited by the heretical thought that there is no such thing as good and bad architecture, any more than there is good and bad nature. It is all in where you stand at the time.

There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.

I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board of other partners tells you it's time to get your gold watch, and no physical claim is made on you like an athlete or an actress. So I try to plug along on the theory that I can still do it. I still keep trying to produce prose, and some poetry, in the hope that I can find something to say about being alive, this country, but generally the human condition.