He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire.

Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly.

A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love.

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.

Just to get serious about this thing, you know. One has to be compassionate. It's true that people are up against things, economically and emotionally.

The troubles came and I saved what I could save. A thread of light, a particle, a wave.

This particular school of Zen has always considered itself the Marines of the spiritual world, so it has a kind of bias against conceptual thinking in favor of a very rigorous physical life.