“As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.”

“I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.”

“When I was a boy, I thought myself a man. Now that I am a man, I find myself a boy.”

“I am beginning to feel the need of a glass of wine to fortify myself against this conversation.”

“A little bit goes a long way — it's true. And I sure am glad I went such a long, long way to find that out for myself.”

“No doubt the great majority of them are in the cemetery long ago, and I suppose the rest of us will join them before long. Speaking for myself I am willing; in fact I believe I have been willing ever since I was eighteen years old; not urgent, but willing, merely willing.”

“I am mountains that crush. I am waves that crash. I am storms that shatter. I am”

“Cutting the Spring Breeze
Throughout heaven and earth there is not a piece of ground where a single stick could be inserted;
I am glad that all things are void, myself and the world:
Honored be the sword, three feet long, wielded by the great Yüan swordsmen;
For it is like cutting a spring breeze in a flash of lightning.”

“I find it funny to praise myself, but I think I am beautiful, just like Chandramukhi.”

“Sometimes I long for a convent cell, with the sublime wisdom of centuries set out on bookshelves all along the wall and a view across the cornfields–there must be cornfields and they must wave in the breeze–and there I would immerse myself in the wisdom of the ages and in myself. Then I might perhaps find peace and clarity. But that would be no great feat. It is right here, in this very place, in the here and the now, that I must find them.”