“No one, it appears, took up his offer to commercialize his invention; like other inventions of his, it worked well for him, but mere mortals found the instructions too complicated.”

“I have a very dear friend, a great painter, called me up very upset, the work wasn’t going well… He asked me to come to his studio -- which I did -- I looked around at the work, dozens of sketches, drawings, large pictures, and I was very close to his work, intensely involved with his work, and he asked me, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I said, ‘Simple – it’s a loss of nerve.”

“I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love.”

“The other fish think me proudor discontented with my station.The birds think I'm beneath them.Even submerged I am outof my element, which I fearthe Lord in his hasteforgot to invent. I senta letter to him once, pleading:make me this or make me that,limbo is hell upon a fish.I got a message back. It read:Don't despair, I made you purposelythat way—bounding breathlessinto space, the way I madeAdam and Eve, flittingbetween the field and ruined gardensof each other's airy arms.”

“It’s a pity if someone… has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart’s ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it.”

“And then he was kissing her, and she was struck by his nearness, his solidity, his smell. It was of the garden and the earth and the sun. When Cassandra opened her eyes, she realized she was crying. She wasn't sad, though, these were the tears of being found, of having come home after a long time away.”

“Nature: that lovely lady to whom we owe polio, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer. ”