All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.

Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until then we have not lived.

The sincerity of feeling that is possible between a writer and a reader is one of the finest things I know.

When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of the spirit are open.

If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky i felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, i felt what would be would be.

Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.

[Dawn] is always such a forgiving time. When that first cold, bright streak comes over the water, it's as if all our sins were pardoned; as if the sky leaned over the earth and kissed it and gave it absolution.