What is sanity, after all, except the control of madness?

And blessed are they who have learned the rhythms of the invisible clock whose hours and minutes are immense and soundless. The great clock of the seasons and the years, and the small clock of the intuition, whose timing is guided by the heart.

You can't be a little bit saintly any more than you can be a little bit pregnant.

Lord make me satisfied with small things. Make me content to live on the outside of life. God make me love the rind!

Old people who live too long come to resemble turtles. As though time turned in a curve, and down they go to the reptiles again. Not the little wet naked frog they were born. But the tortoise. Cold eyes, sagging circles of skin, the nose becomes beak. The shell of sleep.

The things we felt most are hardest to put into words. Hate is always easier to speak of than love. How shall I make love go through the sieve of words and come out something besides a pulp?

The writer's advantage, in some respects, over those whose expression lies in other fields, is in the privilege of a double - sometimes a triple - living. Pleasure multiplied in the mirrors of words, and pain siphoned off in words.