“Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.”

“They say that history is going on somewhere.They say it won't stop. I have heldOne picture still for a long time and waited.”

“When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone,and the meaning has to go find an author again.- The Trouble With Reading”

“Between roars the lion purrs.”

“Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.”

“I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It's endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time. These words that occur to me come out of my relation to the language which is developing even as I am using it.”

“I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.”

“The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.”

“I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is why did other people stop?”

“It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals a kind of secret code.”

“I embrace emerging experience. I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.”