Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.

Somewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might purprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough.

Comedians are the nearest to suicide.

I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.

It’s only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness.

How grudging memory is, and how bitterly she clutches the raw material of her daily work.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.