Writers sometimes talk as though they were the only friends of civilization. This is their conceit. But they have special powers to serve -- or to corrupt -- civilization, and are obliged to use them.

The hunger of the spirit for eternity - as fierce as a starving man's for bread - is much less a craving to go on living than a craving for redemption. Oh, and a protest against absurdity.

I do not think about absent persons as often or with such intense longing as I think of places. They lie one below the other in my mind.

The gesture with which one generation guards the next is the movement, and the only time we see it clearly, of life itself.

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.

Very rare, the intelligence of the heart. The intelligence of the whimsical brain is less rare, less attaching, sometimes tedious.

The young are so much more vulnerable than the old - the stuff is still warm and malleable, it takes impressions.