From Euclid to Newton there were straight lines. The modern age analyzes the wavers.

A writer is in the broadest sense a spokesman of his community. Through him that community comes to know its heart. Without such knowledge, how long can it survive?

You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.

We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.

My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?

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.

Live or die but don't poison everything.