“But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth?”

The memories of childhood have a strange shuttling quality, and areas of darkness ring the spaces of light.

When a person knows and can’t make the others understand, what does he do?

Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons–throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.

The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.

The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.

A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp.

We live in the richest country in the world. There’s plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want.

I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror.

Through the lies, she lived vicariously. The lies doubled the little of her existence that was left over from work and augmented the little rag end of her personal life.

All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.

What are the sources of an illumination? To me, they come after hours of searching and keeping my soul ready. Yet they come in a flash, as a religious phenomenon.

The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.

Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters.

This music was her-the real plain her…This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard.

The writer must hew the phantom rock.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Being a good host offsets the deprivation and loneliness of my youth.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

The same way as failure never being fatal. Just keep going. I’m going to the stars and then past them.

Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one’s well-being.

One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.

You feel vulnerable when you hear things that are not being said.

The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.

It’s not easy being a father, but I’ve been allowed a comeback.