Did you ever, in that wonderland wilderness of adolesence [sic] ever, quite unexpectedly, see something, a dusk sky, a wild bird, a landscape, so exquisite terror touched you at the bone? And you are afraid, terribly afraid the smallest movement, a leaf, say, turning in the wind, will shatter all? That is, I think, the way love is, or should be: one lives in beautiful terror.

Intelligence alone can't make a good writer and style alone can't make a good writer - that is, not a really important or significant writer - but the two things together make a really good writer.

It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something

It’s better to look at the sky than live there

The way his plump hand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically.

My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely.

It's redundant to die in Los Angeles.