18 Quotes by Leonard Michaels

Stories should be natural as apples, brief as lust, long as a thought.

Courage is continuing to perform your daily tasks, and being hopeful despite the odds, not inflicting your fears on others, and remaining sensitive to their needs and expectations, and also not supposing, because you're dying, nothing matters any more.

Never to have to think of yourself as white is a luxory that makes you deeply stupid.

So many writers make dope glamorous; a form of romantic transgression, or world-weariness, or poetic sensitivity, or hipness. Mainly it's the stuff of ritualistic communion among inarticulate bores.

Feb. 1, 1965Storm late at night, heavy rain, a thunderous racket, the windows shaking. I heard my name called. A woman’s voice in hell pleading with me to join her.

Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.

Some animals are secretive; some are shy. A cat is private.

There’s hardly anywhere in literature where you don’t find a triangle.

Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.