“The fiery force is nothing more than the life force as we know it. It is the flame of desire and love, of sex and beauty, of pleasure and joy as we consume and are consumed, as we burn with pleasure and burn out in time.”

“When we kill our desires we stink like any corpse.”

“We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.”

“It is at those times that we can measure ourselves and confront a most startling moment. Life may not be what we thought it was, what it appeared to be; what possibly, for a time, it seemed certain that it was; in the end, we only knew what we thought it was about. It is, and was, bigger than us and beyond out plan. It is at those times we become aware of our humanity”

“We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.”

“Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart's secret places.Blessed is the heart that knows, for honors sake, to stop its beating.Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.”

“The more you depend on forces outside your self, the more you are dominated by them.”