The earth was overwhelmed with beauty and indifferent to it, and I went with a heart ready to crack for its unbearable loveliness.

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.

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

We are dying of preconceptions, outworn rules, decaying flags, venomous religions, and sentimentalities. We need a new world. We've wrenched up all the old roots. The old men have no roots. They don't know it. They just go on talking and flailing away and falling down on the young with their tons of dead weight and their power. For the power is still there, in their life-in-death. But the roots are dead, and the land is poisoned for miles around them.

The woods seemed all answer and healing and more than enough to live for.

in mad people fear goes on constantly, night and day, wearing one ditch in the mind that all thoughts must travel in.

... love and fear increase together with a precision almost mathematical: the greater the love is then the greater the fear is.