“Whatever happened to Search and Discovery in the arts of today? Artists must behave like archaeologists if the guts of visionary filmmaking can happen. They will have to return to the depths of the collective unknown to find out what we're all about. From that universal dream our most individual and forceful voices can emerge.”

“as small as a world and as large as aloneFor whatever we lose(like a you or a me)it’s always ourselves we find in the sea”

“Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most people? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar deterioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying.you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough.”

“I can't forget things, or ignore them-bad things that happen," I said. "I'm a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.”

“Most secret societies—at least those you can read about in books or on the Internet—are collegiate. Or adult... They are like fraternities, only they don't have houses or public identities. In colleges, their members are usually local, not national, but the adult ones tend to be more serious and on a larger scale.We don't actually know what they do. Because they're secret.”

“10maggie and millie and molly and maywent down to the beach (to play one day)and maggie discovered a shell that sangso sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, andmillie befriended a stranded starwhose rays five languid fingers wereand molly was chased by a horrible thingwhich raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and may came home with a smooth round stoneas small as a world & as large as aloneFor whatever we lose (like a you or a me)it's always ourselves we find in the sea”

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”