“Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook.”

“As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold
By ones and twos and threes, and the others stand
Timidly, holding down their eyes and nostrils,
And what the foremost does the others do,
Huddling themselves against her, if she stop,
Simple and quiet and the wherefore know not.”

“Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.”

“Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. It would seem to be enough advantage to the angler that the fish has the hook in his mouth rather than the angler.”

“God's mouth knows not how to speak falsehood, but he brings to pass every word.”

“He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep moreover, that could afford to employ wolves.”

“What does winter or autumn or spring or summer know of memory. They know nothing of memory. They know that seasons pass and return. They know that they are seasons. That they are time. And they know how to affirm themselves. And they know how to impose themselves. And they know how to maintain themselves, What does autumn know of summer. What sorrows do seasons have. None hate. None love. They just pass.”

“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.”

“Could you hold the chainsaw a bit closer to your mouth, please?”

“A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.”