We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all..

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it..

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?.

Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic..

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a youn….

Ecstasy, I think, is a soul's response to the waves holiness makes as it nears..

Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the p….

A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all..

Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive t….

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave..

I think that the dying pray at the last not please but thank you, as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are cryin….

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world..

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from c….

Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe..

Painters work from the ground up. The latest version of a painting overlays earlier versions, and obliterates them. Writers, on the other hand, work ….

Then why did you tell me?.

Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit..

Cruelty is a mystery, and a waste of pain..

There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary, a batch of technical skills and equipment, and, perhaps,….

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. ….

But enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splend….