“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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