“Here we go mother on the shipless ocean. Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.”

Time isn’t made of anything. It is an abstraction. Just a meaning that we impose upon motion.

What makes life life and not a simple story? Jagged bits moving never still, all along the wall.

We’re talking about the struggle to drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of grammar, syntax, human sense; every attempt means starting over with language. Starting over with accuracy.

When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should ‘teach writing,’ which I have no idea how to do and don’t really believe in.

Making is always a slightly hopeful thing because once you’ve made something, it’ll – the world will be different.

We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth– we call it life.

It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.

I’ve come to understand that the best one can hope for as a human is to have a relationship with that emptiness where God would be if God were available, but God isn’t.

I am kind of a curmudgeonly person, so I don’t gravitate to groups or traditions, which is probably just pretentious of me.

All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies.

Under the seams runs the pain.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I’ll be leaving; this won’t last. It’s a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I’m just sad.

Everything depends on liking the people and trusting the people. You have to assume that whatever they do will be as good as you want the thing to be and just go ahead with that.

Do you remember when they taught cursive in schools? I think they don’t anymore. But I still enjoy it – just the physical act and all the – the whole business of making a thing out of language.

Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness.

It is … impossible to keep one’s excellence in a little glass casket, like a jewel, to take it out whenever wanted.

One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.

Who will look out for you if you do the right thing.

Courage in danger is half the battle.

A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.

It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming.

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

To seek Truth is to avoid Truth, constantly.