“Art is affirmation.”

“Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language. It encourages us to take words for granted. Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely. This is advantageous on the one hand but dangerous on the other. The result is that we have developed a kind of false security where language is concerned, and our sensitivity to language has deteriorated. And we have become in proportion insensitive to silence.”

“To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion.”

“A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.”

“It was not an exclamation so much, I think, as it was a warding off, an exertion of language upon ignorance and disorder.”

“We perceive existence by means of words and names. To this or that vague, potential thing I will give a name, and it will exist thereafter, and its existence will be clearly perceived. The name enables me to see it. I can call it by its name, and I can see it for what it is.”

“If coupling should but make us whole / And of the selfsame mind and soul, / Then couple let's in celebration; / We have contained the population.”