“Any artist who has ever created something worthwhile has done so by staying true to himself. You can't do it any other way.”

“Joan Finch is tall and sickly thin. She is wearing a tight black dress that accentuates her bony legs, the crookedness of her body. She looks like a burnt matchstick.”

“ Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat hissweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;or the young woman who has set herself the task of scrapingher shadow off a wall.... Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chipsin her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was givento a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, whichsaddened his mother, that her son should be so lost invanity.... Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner,whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the manwho disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and fordessert served himself a chilled fedora.... ”

“Creating New Worlds Through Imagination”

“I think, therefore I am, said a man whose mother quickly hit him on the head, saying, I hit my son on the head, therefore I am.No no, you've got it all wrong, cried the man.So she hit him on the head again and cried, therefore I am.You're not, not that way; you're supposed to think, not hit, cried the man.. . . I think, therefore I am, said the man.I hit, therefore we both are, the hitter and the one who gets hit, said the man's mother.But at this point the man had ceased to be; unconscious he could not think. But his mother could. So she thought, I am, and so is my unconscious son, even if he doesn't know it . . .”

“……, but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there.”

“A blessed companion is a book! A book that, fitly chosen, is a life-long friend.”