The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

Almost all the joyful things of life are outside the measure of IQ tests.

The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but . . . what we are meant to be.

To be a witness means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.

We do not know and cannot tell when the spirit is with us. Great talent or small, it makes no difference. We are caught within our own skins, our own sensibilities; we never know if our technique has been adequate to the vision.