“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”

“Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

“How loose he seemed to himself, under the stars! The spaces between the stars were pores, out of which human meaning evaporated.”

“‎Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.”

“There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin.”

“The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift amont each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried.”

“He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars.”