That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.

I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of the miracle is here, among us. The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention.

That odd capacity for destitution, as if by nature we ought to have so much more than nature gives us. As if we are shockingly unclothed when we lack the complacencies of ordinary life. In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all.

I owe everything that I have done to the fact that I am very much at ease being alone.

The mind has a complex life that can seem quite autonomous - dreams, obsessions, unwilled memory are all instances of this.

You have to live with your mind your whole life.

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.