All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

Pointless. . . . Like giving caviar to an elephant.

When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.

I knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor in the face of a cyclone.

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not.

When I was a boy I first learned how much better water tastes when it has set a while in a cedar bucket. Warmish-cool, with a faint taste like the hot July wind in Cedar trees smells.