Nothing we do is inevitable, but everything we do is irreversible.

You must stop worrying about why things happen and wonder what they mean when they do.

One is always enthralled, I think, when a young writer you're just beginning to read and comprehend dies.

Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve--hopeless ly he writes in the hope that he might serve--not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace that knows us.

There is a certain type of conversation one hears only when one is drunk and it is like a dream, full of humor and threat and significance, deep significance.

But who knows what good might come from the least of us? From the bones of old horses is made the most beautiful Prussian Blue.

For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels-at the very least with the tongues of angels-they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes.