What I call innocence is the spirit’s unselfconscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object.

Innocence is not the prerogative of infants and puppies, and far less of mountains and fixed stars, which have no prerogatives at all. It is not lost to us; the world is a better place than that.

The irrational haunts the metaphysical.

This hospital, like every other, is a hole in the universe through which holiness issues in blasts. It blows both ways, in and out of time.

The notion of the infinite variety of detail and the multiplicity of forms is a pleasing one; in complexity are the fringes of beauty, and in variety are generosity and exuberance.

Much has been written about the life of the mind.

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

Matters of taste are not, it turns out, moral issues.

Write as if you were dying.

The writer studies literature, not the world.