Man is at the nadir of his stregth when the Earth, the seas, the mountains are not in him, for without them his soul is unsourced, and he has no images by which to abide.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

It takes a long time to understand nothing.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

A strong foe is better than a weak friend.

Narcissus never wrote well nor was a friend.

Think of what starlight And lamplight would lack Diamonds and fireflies If they couldn’t lean against Black. . . .

The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are going.

No matter how tall and wide darkness is, it cannot block the stars.

Hold tight, and I promise to do the same. We don't need a safety net Zena. We have each other.

In my position, I could be a debutante. But we only got to this position by being a politically active family.

Indigenous people believe that Man belongs to the World; civilized people believe that the World belongs to Man.

More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm.

At least she had a clear picture of what the Lying Game was now: Girl Scouts for psychopaths.

I do still like television very much, but the theatre does really have something special about it.

And so I'm saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now.