Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report.

Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn't taking place.

In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.

He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.

When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.

We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.

Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?