40 quotes
American novelist, poet (1932–2009)
“Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.”
"Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience."
on Life
"Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness."
on Philosophy
"It is easy to love people in memory the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you."
on Love
"What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit."
on Art
"I was made to feel I could do things. If you get this feeling early and can hold it until you're 15, you tend to never lose it."
on Inspirational
"There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals."
on Happiness
"From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few."
"Perhaps we meet our heaven at the start and not the end of life."
"The dead teach this great lesson, which we are loathe to learn: we too will die."
on Death
"Chaos is God's body. Order is the Devil's chains."
on Spirituality
"They’ve not forgotten him: worse, they never heard of him."
on Truth
"We are cruel enough without meaning to be."
on Compassion
"The difficulty with humourists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't whichever seems likelier to win an effect."
on Humor
"We are most alive when we're in love."
"Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant of a teacher and a learner."
on Relationships
"Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it."
"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
on Dreams
"What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit."
"Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings."
on Time
"Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner."
