“The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.”

“I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.”

“That was in Crescent City, California, up near the Oregon border. I left soon after. But today I was thinking of that place, of Crescent City, and of how I was trying out a new life there with my wife, and how, in the barber's chair that morning, I had made up my mind to go. I was thinking today about the calm I felt when I closed my eyes and let the barber's fingers move through my hair, the sweetness of those fingers, the hair already starting to grow.”

“At leastI want to get up early one more morning,before sunrise. Before the birds, even.I want to throw cold water on my faceand be at my work tablewhen the sky lightens and smokebegins to rise from the chimneysof the other houses.I want to see the waves breakon this rocky beach, not just hear thembreak as I did in my sleep.I want to see again the shipsthat pass through the Strait from everyseafaring country in the world -old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,and the swift new cargo vesselspainted every color under the sunthat cut the water as they pass.I want to keep an eye out for them.And for the little boat that pliesthe water between the shipsand the pilot station near the lighthouse.I want to see them take a man off the shipand put another one up on board.I want to spend the day watching this happenand reach my own conclusions.I hate to seem greedy - I have so much to be thankful for already.But I want to get up early one more morning, at least. And go to my place with some coffee and wait.Just wait, to see what's going to happen.”

“Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason -- if the worlds are in any way blurred -- the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'.”

“But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold and where he'd go in it—was outside, for a while anyway.”

“I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.”