'Its spreading branches seemed to cast a light rather than a shade, and silver apples peeped out like stars from under every leaf.'

 

"Those are pearls that were his eyes"

'What frightens us about the carnival, I think, is not that it will come to town. Or that it will leave town, which it always does. What frightens us is the possibility that it will leave forever, and never come back, and take us with it when it goes.'

'My father was a quiet man who took things quietly, although he felt them deeply.

One of his axioms I always remember, if you must do a thing do it graciously.'

Sat all day by the riverside and slept all night in the trees.

It was there I stopped believing
in the value of self-image and experience.
I went round saying it – ‘I have no self-image
and have destroyed all my experience.
Also, I am surrounded by the dead
who speak to me through silences
on tapes.’ I know Americans believe such things,
so I’d add, ‘Not really!’ very quickly.
On the plane I thought about Tom Cruise,
how easily I could visualise his face.
I wondered if his face was a fair gauge
of where and who he’d been, and to what extent
it was the sack his soul was pushed into.

  

 Winter. It made things visible.

'Relax and enjoy the party, to the extent that it is possible to do so; it is not over yet.'

 

'But it is wrong to speak of "situations," implying sets of circumstances leading to some resolution, some escape of tension; there were no situations, simply the balloon hanging there -- muted heavy grays and browns for the most part, contrasting with the walnut and soft yellows. A deliberate lack of finish, enhanced by skillful installation, gave the surface a rough, forgotten quality; sliding weights on the inside, carefully adjusted, anchored the great, vari-shaped mass at a number of points. Now we have had a flood of original ideas in all media, works of singular beauty as well as significant milestones in the history of inflation, but at that moment, there was only this balloon, concrete particular, hanging there.'

'You live in a house when in quiet times it must feel like having a picnic on a volcano'

 

 

'I too have known that sudden quickening of the pulse when something looks a bit like something else.'

'About twenty minutes after I started sitting and waiting, Victor came out of his office building and headed down Western on foot. I waited until he got to the corner, and when he turned right on Sunset I got out of the Olds and hot-footed it after him, slowing to a casual walk when I reached Sunset. I crossed to the south side of Sunset and headed west. Victor was across the street from me, maybe fifty yards ahead. He had a furtive quality to his walk, but it was probably instinctive. He didn't look around. Halfway down the next block he turned into a bar called Reno's. I let him settle in, then I sidled in myself and slid into a booth near the front. The waitress scowled at me, one guy in a booth for four.'

'The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.'