An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general.

I'm apt to get drunk on words...Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being.

I love my mother, not as a prisoner of atherosclerosis, but as a person; and I must love her enough to accept her as she is, now, for as long as this dwindling may take.

if a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child.

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.