But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord." "It might to keep it open.

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else

All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.

No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.

What good is music? None ... and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and factories and Leaders, music says, 'You are irrelevant'; and, arrogant and gentle as a god, to the suffering man it says only, 'Listen.' For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses men build for themselves, that they may see the sky.