'Should rumour of a shabby ending reach you, it was half my fault and half the atmosphere'

'I may think of you softly from time to time.
But I'll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.'

"dance and wail, dance and wail"

'Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.'

'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.'