“All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.”

“Nothing retains less of desire in art, in science, than this will to industry, booty, possession.”

“Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high ...”

“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all ...”

“Il faut que l’homme s’évade de cette lice ridicule qu’on lui a faite: le prétendu réel actuel avec la perspective d’un réel futur qui ne vaille guère mieux. Chaque minute pleine porte en elle-même ...”

“Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.”

“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...”

“Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.”

“Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to ...”

“They say that it is always poets that die in wars, and I never got over a sense of being in the trenches.”