“Here we are, I thought, a bunch of grown-up kids locked in an empty room playing naive games with each other. No one understands anybody else. We are wandering around in dark caves, holding our little private candles, hoping for some great illumination. I don't like to think I'm as confused or simple-minded as the others, but if I really am more complex, more experienced than they are, why should I want them to understand me?”

“He wanted to tell her how much he preferred to look at her, that only by watching could he memorize her, and take her and possess her. He did not know how to explain that he could not touch better or more fully with his hands than he could with his eyes. Seeing encompassed all at once; a touch was limited to one spot at a time.”

“Why do we sacrifice so much energy to our art?Not in order to teach others but to learn with them what our existence, our organism, our personal and repeatable experience have to give us; to learn to break down the barriers which surround us and to free ourselves from the breaks which hold us back, from the lies about ourselves which we manufacture daily for ourselves and for others; to destroy the limitations caused by our ignorance or lack of courage; in short, to fill the emptiness in us: to fulfill ourselves...art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.”

“It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.”

“She protected herself by making herself believe no-one else could ever really understand her.”

“We understand everything; that is why we understand nothing. ”

“I'm a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.”