“The true work of artis but a shadow of the divine perfection”

“I asked if Tyler was an artist. Tyler shrugged...What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand. . . he said how at exactly four-thirty the hand was perfect. The giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute, and for one perfect minute Tyler sat in the palm of a perfection he'd created himself. One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”

“Butter is true divinity”

“All these perfect days, made of glassPut on the shelf where they can castperfect shadows that stretch and growon the imperfect days down below.... perfect shadows that shift and glow...... perfect shadows that shift and grow...""Sam singing on page 256 of Linger.”

“Divine revelation is perfect and, therefore, it is not subject to continual and indefinite progress of human reason.”

“Ruskin says that anyone who expects perfection from a work of art knows nothing of works of art. This is an appealing sentence that, so far as I can see, is not true about a few pictures and statues and pieces of music, short stories and short poems. Whether or not you expect perfection from them, you get it; at least, there is nothing in them that you would want changed. But what Ruskin says is true about novels: anyone who expects perfection from even the greatest novel knows nothing of novels.”