Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful exercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all the animals, had a fine thumb. Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

Nobody had ever told me that anything could be like this.

History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that.

The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see.

Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.

But for the present I would lie there and know I didn't have to get up, and feel the holy emptiness and blessed fatigue of a saint after the dark night of the soul. For God and Nothing have a lot in common. You look either one of Them straight in the eye for a second and the immediate effect on the human constitution is the same.