“I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand.”

“Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’."(on Lillian Hellman)”

“I couldn't trust you with it. To do something with it. I don't want anybody talking about me. To say where I was or what I said when I was there. I mean, you could talk about me maybe. But nobody could say that it was me. I could be anybody. I think in times like these the less said the better. If something had happened and we were survivors and we met on the road then we'd have something to talk about. But we're not. So we don't.”

“There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.”

“What would you do if I died?If you died I would want to die too.So you could be with me?Yes. So I could be with you.Okay.”

“I told him that I believe all things in nature bear the mark of their Maker. The eagle, the owl, and the wind.We sat silently for a long moment, understanding that we are not so different really.”

“He tried to think of something to say but could not. He's had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things toe eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.”