It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had. *Milkman*

They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.

The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.

When a man angers you, he conquers you.

Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.