If a writer starts worring about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line.
Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.
If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.
Histories, chronologies and almanacs offer us the illusion of progress, even though, over and over again, we are given proof that there is no such thing.
We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.
What he was scared of was not that maybe she was a creature who survived by drinking other people's blood. No, it was that she might push him away.
People with large book collections are almost always diligent learners.
How complex, untrustworthy, and important our stories are. We will never tell you the true story of our lives.
I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.
Mid-range, androgynous voice. I first thought that Solaris was a guy. Then a girl. Maybe. Then I gave up trying to figure out which. It would become obvious at some point, or not.
In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.
Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.
Through practice, gently and gradually we can collect ourselves and learn how to be more fully with what we do.
I wanted to believe that Makandal flew away, but my wishes can’t fly freely so. They’re rooted to the ground like me, who eats salt.
This is a long goodbye, yet not time enough. I have no aptitude for this. I cannot learn this. I would hold on, and hold on, until my hands clutch at emptiness.
He said he preferred to feel the earth sing through his feet, and that shoes stopped you from hearing the song of the earth.
To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.
It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it.
You think I'm deranged! How refreshing. Everyone here takes me so seriously, it's a wonderful change to be thought mentally deficient.
When a great adventure is launched with a powerful thrust, fatigue in the muscles and doubts in the mind are swept away by a fullness that moves life along like a breath from the depths of the soul.
Difficult times do not produce gentility, as if there is an angle hovering over the world of the oppressed.
