Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste.

We store in memory only images of value. The value may be lost over the passage of time, but that's the implacable judgment of feeling.

Memory is, first, a captivating mystery.

The artist's work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. And something terrible resides at the heart of wonder. Celebration is social, amenable. Wonder has a chaotic splendor.

The golden light of metaphor, which is the intelligence of poetry, was implicit in alchemical study. To change, magically, one substance into another, more valuable one is the ancient function of metaphor, as it was of alchemy.

landscape, that vast still life, invites description, not narration. It is lyric. It has no story: it is the beloved, and asks only to be contemplated.

The real subject of autobiography is not one's experience but one's consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool.