“I used to think when I was younger and writing that each idea had a certain shape and when I started to study Greek and I found the word morphe it was for me just the right word for that, unlike the word shape in English which falls a bit short morphe in greek means the sort of plastic contours that an idea has inside your all your senses when you grasp it the first moment and it always seemed to me that a work should play out that same contour in its form. So I can’t start writing something down til I get a sense of that, that morphe. And then it unfolds, I wouldn’t say naturally, but it unfolds gropingly by keeping only to the contours of that form whatever it is.”

“Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can.”

“fr. 2All We as Leaves He (following Homer) compares man's life with the leaves.All we as leaves in the shock of it: spring-one dull gold bounce and you're there. You see the sun? - I built that.As a lad. The Fates lashing their tails in a corner. But (let me think) wasn't it a hotel in Chicago where I had the first of those - my body walking out of the room bent on some deadly errandand me up on the ceiling just sort of fading out- brainsex paintings I used to call them?In the days when I (so to speak) painted. Rememberthat oddly wonderful chocolate we got in East (as it was then) Berlin?”

“Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you.Have you given much thought to our mortal condition?Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen.All mortals owe a debt to death.There's no one alivewho can say if he will be tomorrow.Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery.No one can teach it, no one can grasp it.Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink!But don't forget Aphrodite--that's one sweet goddess.You can let the rest go. Am I making sense?I think so. How about a drink.Put on a garland. I'm surethe happy splash of wine will cure your mood.We're all mortal you know. Think mortal.Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life,it's just catastrophe.”

“When I first started studying Greek, one of my absolute favorite parts was realizing that so many English words had these old, secret roots. Learning Greek was like being given a super-power: linguistic x-ray vision.”

“Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...”

“If I'm a guy who doesn't seem so merry,It's just because I'm so misunderstood.When I was young I ate a dictionary,And that did not do me a bit of good.For I've absorbed so many words and phrases—They drive me dizzy when I want to speak.I start explaining but each person gazesAs if I spoke in Latin or in Greek.”