“The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living.”

“any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man”

“They WERE walking alongside the road, they WERE hit by a car, and now they ARE dead. It doesn't work. Are is present tense. Dead is -- well, dead is past, isn't it? Present tense modifying past; being modifying non-being. Language, in this instance" -- and here Miriam makes a garbled noise in her throat-- "fails.”

“In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future."-- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors”

“It is to the man who is trying to live, to the man who is obedient to the word of the Master, that the word of the Master unfolds itself.”

“I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?”