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.

Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that we part.

Almost everything is double like that for adolescents; their lies are true and their truths are lies, and their hearts are broken by the world. They gyre and fall; they see through everything, and are blind.

I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

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

The model of modern Western civilization is the virus: the pure bit of information, which turns its environment into endless reproductions of itself.

The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper.