“Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?"- from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird”

“Open skies painted above painted doorways and painted birds skimming across bricks trying to fly away. Little bird, what are you thinking? You come from a can.”

“We're not very good as a species at looking into the future. It's much easier to look back at the past. We can edit out the bits we don't like, reinvent ourselves. But there's nothing about the future we can edit or reinvent. Most people are prisoners of the future just as much as they are prisoners of their genes.”

“Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand.”

“Whether he chooses a 'scholarly' or a 'popular' edition the modern reader is likely to have his judgement influenced in advance. Almost invariably he will be offered an assisted passage. Footnotes, Forewords, Afterwords serve notice that a given text is intellectually taxing—that he is likely to need help. Such apparatus is likely tobe a positive disincentive to casual reading. But a cheaper edition may offer interference of another kind. Reminders, in words or pictures, of Julie Christie's Bathsheba Everdene or Michael York's Pip can perhaps create a beguiling sense of accessibility. But theymay also pre-empt the imaginative responses of the reader.”

“But he may please to consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climate or nation; and that they are much more uniform than can be easily imagined.”