Progress means nothing to presence.

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

Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby.

Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception.

Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go control, when the work takes off on its own and flies, farther than they ever planned or imagined, to places they didn't know they knew.

Without war there are no heroes. What harm would that be? Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is.

What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.