A writer is a reader moved to emulation.

Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.

But a man's character is his fate... and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.

The sand swallows burst out of their scupper holes in the bluffs and out over the transparent drown of the water, back again to the white, to the brown, to the black, from moving to stock-still sand waves and water-worked woods and roots that hugged and twisted in the sun.

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

(Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born.