It's a writer's job to carve with language, to hew close to the bone.

One of life's great truths is this: when one is about to be struck by a speeding six-hundred pound Coke machine, one need worry about little else.

I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they "don't have time to read." This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.

I’m so afraid that all I can reach will lead me to all I dare not see.

The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy.

Schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.

The quiet, singing voice of the rose. The song that promised all might be well, all might be well, that all manner of things might be well.