It's probably simply a matter of temperament that I never stopped to wonder if I could "match" what I had done, never choked off my writing by competing with myself, or with anybody else for that matter. My ambition was absolutely centered on the work itself, never on what it would bring me, or "who" it would make me. I never cared about that at all.

The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

Living in a world that is valued only as gain, an ever-expanding world-as-frontier that has no worth of its own, no fullness of its own, you live in danger of losing your own worth to yourself. That's when you begin to listen to the voices from the other side, and to ask questions of failure and the dark.

When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.

She'll die.' 'Aye. That's a consequence of being alive.

To oppose something is to maintain it.

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