If you do wrestle with it and find the spring of its opening it will be a place to rest in all the days of your life.
In my country there are no gods left. The Romans have driven them out. There are some who say that they have hidden themselves in the mountains, but I do not believe it. Three nights I have been on the mountains seeking them everywhere. I did not find them. And at last I called them by their names, and they did not come. I think they are dead.
The true nature of the world is energy not mass.
What if?’ has no power against ‘What if not?’ The not of you is unbearable. I must have you.
I tried to copy my parents, as monkeys do, but they were trying to copy me, looking to the child for the energy and hope they had long since lost.
To do something large and to do it well demands such observances, personal and peculiar, laughable as they often are, because they stave off that dinginess of soul that says that everything is small and grubby and nothing is really worth the effort.
There are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it.
It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.
He loves books,’ said Perdita. ‘Yeah. He does. When you’ve finished a book you can put it away and it doesn’t ask to see you again.
What other places are there in the world than those discovered on a lover’s body?
The wider we read the freer we become.
Miss Pinch came visiting, and asked me what I intended to do with my Future. She spoke about it as though it were an incurable disease.
I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. Some people’s emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body.
If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches.
Can anyone deny that we are haunted? What is it that crouches under the myths we have made? Always the physical presence of something split off.
I like to see the people arriving. I like to imagine their lives. It keeps me from thinking too much about my own. A man shouldn’t be too introspective. It weakens him. That is the difference between Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway. I’m a Hemingway man myself although I don’t believe it is right to hunt lions.
In the sky, Planet Moon is 239,000 miles away. That’s not far when you remember that the sun is 93 million miles away.
What’s the big deal? Snow’s just rain that’s been left out in the cold.
I’m not against anyone fastening their life to an event of some significance and that way making themselves significant. God knows, we need what footholds we can find on the glass mountain of our existence. Trouble is, you climb and climb, and around middle age, you discover you have spent all the time in the same spot. You thought you were going to be somebody until you slip down into the nobody that you are. I’m telling you because I know.
The point about food is that a lot of it used to be left-overs and recycling.