All creative effort - including the making of an omelet - is preceded by destruction.

Geography is the study of earth as the home of people

Animals are like humans, only more openly carnal and sexual, more openly and therefore more disarmingly absurd.

I feel a reassuring oneness with other people when I find that even my most intimate, anguished, socially inadmissible emotions and desires are known to others.... Kindred souls—indeed, my selves otherwise costumed—turn up in books in the most unexpected places. Discovering them is one of the great rewards of a liberal education. If I quote liberally, it is not to show off book learning, which at my stage of life can only invite ridicule, but rather to bathe in this kinship of strangers.

Lucidity, I maintain, is almost always desirable.

It is by thoughtful reflection that the elusive moments of the past draw near to us in present reality and gain a measure of permanence.

Place is security, space is freedom.