“All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”

“The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.”

“A man was coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the churchbells had begun. The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.”

“I want the dead to be deadforever.I don't want to be one of them,Except of course you can't be one of them.You can't be one of the deadbecause that which, has no existence can have no community.No community!My heart warms just thinking about it--blackness, aloneness,silence, peace,and all of it only a heartbeat away.[ The Sunset Limited - 2011 ]”

“The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.”

“In the spaniards heart is a great yearning for freedom, but only his own. A great love for truth and honor in all its forms, but not in its substance. And a deep conviction that nothing can be proven except that it be made to bleed. Virgins, bulls, men. Ultimately God himself.”