Carole Maso

“It's an honor and privilege to be next to the great mysteries, and that's what I get to do every day. Why are we here? How beautiful the Earth is. Whatever it is, large and small. There's so much that's beautiful and moving and sad, to experience that and find shapes for it, to deeply enter that meditative space. There's nothing like it. Everything else seems so pale.”

“One of the strangest things about writing well is that it requires two different zones in the brain--rigor and recklessness--simultaneously.”

“After sex, after coffee, after everything there is to be said --The hovering and beautiful alphabet as we form our first words after making love.And somehow I'm still alive.”

“As if thought were not our most passionate, our most ardent aspect.”

“But sometimes even the sky is dangerous. I look up and see your face in the stars.”

“You were a painting by Matisse, but you took sleeping pills.”

“You think an essay should have a hypothesis, a conclusion, should argue points. You really do bore me.”

“One loves art more than life; it's better than life, don't you think, Ali? It doesn't disappoint so," she sighed. "It's not so frightening," she said, her eyes filled with terror.”

“I believe in books.”

“How I love them. How good they are. They endure endless hours of me talking about the future. They keep me near and at the same time bid me farewell. That is what real love is.”

“Huddled around the fire of the alphabet...”