“An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely.”

“Man is the only living being who has a developed self-awareness and death-awareness.”

“Living in a bittersweet state, with an intense awareness of life's fragility and the pain of separation, is an underappreciated strength and an unexpected path to wisdom, joy, and especially communion.”

“The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it.”

“To be aware of a single shortcoming in oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in someone else.”

“The Quran encourages us to expose the reality of those who are followed by exhorting the followers to be aware of the faults of the oppressors no matter how strong and influential they would appear to be.”

“We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!”

“The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.”

“Prose will be used for the more objective branches of writing- novels, plays, essays.. Cadence will be used for personal, emotional, lyrical utterances in which the phrasing goes with a stronger beat and the words live together with an intense flame.”

“Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.”