The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

To hear, one must be silent.

Reading is performance. The reader--the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk--performs the work. The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo; after all, they have the same enemy, sterility.

To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.

Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed.