Memory is, first, a captivating mystery.

Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste.

It is hard to sever the cords that tie us to our slavery and leave intact those that bind us to ourselves.

Refuse to write your life and you have no life.

French was the only language we had in common, and even that was like a dialect we had picked up at a rummage sale, rusty and missing a lot of essential parts.

Fundamentally, [prayer] is a position, a placement of oneself.

In description we hear and feel the absorption of the author in the material. We sense the presence of the creator of the scene. .. This personal absorption is what we mean by 'style.' It is strange that we would choose so oddly surfacey a word - style - for this most soulful aspect of writing. We could, perhaps more exactly, call this relation between consciousness and its subject 'integrity.' What else is the articulation of perception?