“No matter how cleverly we disguise our anxieties they bear witness to the imperfect nature of the human heart. To be is to become. To become is not to be. We are a work-in-progress, incomplete, imp...”

“A mistake is the name we give to any action in which we perceive a difference between what we intended and what has occurred. Intention fuels every dramatic action, including the writing of dramati...”

“Originality has nothing to do with producing something new - it is about seeking the source, the primordial ground from which you draw and have always drawn your being. It comes about when one wor...”

“My dear woman, our greatest problem is that almost everything is a goddamned code. We do not know what is real any more. Every gesture is symbolic. A man cannot shit short of some pundit finding hi...”

“Character is not purchased with a dance in the street. It's expensive and hard to come by. Though it is the heir of disappointment, betrayal and frustration, it is not the inheritance that matters ...”

“Fear is elemental to every human endeavour involving risk and change, which includes ALL creative endeavours. To be creative is to be anxious. To endure the anxiousness - to face it and work with i...”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”

“Im not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. Ive seen a chunk of the universe, true, but theres still so much more to see. I doubt Ill ever cure t...”

“My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,My gentle guide, in following thee.”

“Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmonious...”

“We speak for those who cannot speak. We have a duty to tell the stories for those who do not have the advantages that we have to tell stories. We must not speak falsely. The stories that we are ent...”

“Some writers might tell you that writing is like a piece of magic - a process of creating something out of nothing, and I guess I used to think about it that way too a long long time ago. But as I'...”

“As a writer, you cant get to where you want to be, coming from the place you started, unless you have something extremely important you want to say to someone who really doesnt want to know.”