When you're young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it's barely the beginning.

She was transparent, like a watercolor. As if she were about to dissolve in sound, in tones not yet created.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

Maybe it's wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.

The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.

Confronted with people who have power, and who enjoy using it, I turn into a different person, a baser and meaner one.

We think there are limits to the dimensions of fear. Until we encounter the unknown. Then we can all feel boundless amounts of terror.