Personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer.

Every artist makes herself born. You must bring the artist into the world yourself.

William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.

The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.

This is reality, whether you like it or not--all those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.

The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops running.

Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.