“Awkward approximations, dull stammerings which cannot convey my sense of exhilaration as I seem to burst impediments, to exceed bounds of the possible, to experience, in the ruins of the human, the birth of something utterly new.”

“The sudden approximation of my dull, provincial life to a New Yorker cartoon was exhilarating.”

“In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone's brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others.”

“Let me add, however, that in every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone's brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others, though you wrote volumes about it and spent thirty-five years in explaining your idea; something will always be left that will obstinately refuse to emerge from your head and that will remain with you for ever and you will die without having conveyed to anyone what is perhaps the most vital point of your idea.”

“Truth is for the gods; from our human point of view, it is an ideal, towards which we can approximate, but which we cannot hope to reach.”

“I experience religious dread whenever I find myself thinking that I know the limits of God’s grace, since I am utterly certain it exceeds any imagination a human being might have of it. God does, after all, so love the world.”