“I tell you once and for all—in front of the angel pictures on the wall, that I am not a host to load-bearing ghosts or headyentities, and if I was ever holy, I have fallen farinto the dense atmosphere of the living.”

“Through a trick lighting technique the skyline was made and faded with the care of a pointillist— maybe aiding us to think nothing was missing. We traded verbsabout what was happeningin the metropolis, realizing,in the scorched plum of dusk,actual human infinity was occurring on an island before us....”

“A giant motherboard of geese,unruffled by the statepolice, swarmed in unison,in harmony...”

“Once lively peonies nowwind-weary, and ragged at the edges, hang their heavy crowns; rain on their backs,one final act, beforedetaching from the stemand falling down.”

“Such is a communityof inviolable immunity, protectedfrom tampering or harpooningmutiny. Every better thinker’s impulse to shrink us (at the shoreline from our lifeblood’s deep pulse) uses disparaging scrutiny to sink us.”

“I write for pages,get lost in the mezzaninehidden from stages.”

“Time’s relativity is considered and abandoned, for the more revelatory experiences of starlightin strands, and pearly floors that span as far as absolute compassion...”

“If you knew you were going to lose your memorybut you could choose five things you’d never forget, what would they be—a certain face, a taste, a scent,a touch; how deepin this, the middle of your life?”

“I dream for an absentee and oft maligned device—the accident-maker, the soul-taker, my camera; its factory guaranteedthird eye, without which I am duly dimand memory denied. No picturesfor my contrived Arbus to declare, excepting some stitch of Sextonmanages these sentences of despair.”

“He may take long walksin the raining darkalmost aimlesslyto a spot of soaked grassin a neighbor’s open field.He’s decided this is the placefor you and him to meet again.”

“You think it’s a game?Unintelligible? Ha!Envision no spoons.This is serious.It is a matter of joyversus emptiness.”