“An idea which needs rifles to survive dies of its own accord.”

“Karen told me about an old woman who was the last surviving inhabitant of one of the Hermit Islands. She was the only one left who could speak her tribe's language, but the anthropologists didn't realize it and never bothered to learn it from her. When the old woman died, the language died with her.”

“As a boy I got the idea that death was an animal which lay curled inside waiting to swallow us.”

“My cynicism continuously undermines her faith in her own ability to master her moods.”

“Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.”

“There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.”

“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.”