"As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul."
"I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now."
"To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road."
"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."
"As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope."
"Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn't taking place."