«However tiny the mass, it plays its part int the balance of the stars. Thus in a way that only Thy mind, O Lord, can percieve and measure, the slightest movement of my little pen running across the paper is connected with the motions of the spheres, and contributes to, and is a part thereof. The same takes place in the world of intellect. Ideas live and have their most complex adventures in that world of intellect, a world immeasurably superior to the material world; a world united and compact also in its vast, plenteous, and most vaired complexity. As in the material and intellectual worlds, so it is in the infinitely greater moral world.»

«What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.»

«Thousands stand and chant. Around them in the world, people ride escalators going up and sneak secret glances at the faces coming down. People dangle teabags over hot water in white cups. Cars run silently on the autobahns, streaks of painted light. People sit at desks and stare at office walls. They smell their shirts and drop them in the hamper. People bind themselves into numbered seats and fly across time zones and high cirrus and deep night, knowing there is something they've forgotten to do.»

«I've run less risk driving my way across country than eating my way across it»

«You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.»

«God of pity and love, return to this earth. Go not so far away, leaving us to evil. Darkness is loose upon the world, the Devil Walks in the land, and there is nothing worth. Death like a dog runs howling from his lair; His bite has made men mad, they follow after All howling too, and their demoniac laughter Drowns like a sea our solitary prayer. Return, 0 Lord, return. Come with the day, Come with the light, that men may see once more Across this earth's uncomfortable floor The kindly paths, the old and loving way. Let us not die of evil in the night. Let there be God again. Let there be light.»

«And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release - out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know?»

«...What I like does tend to be left-field. I feel somehow much more comfortable playing it. I relate more easily than I do when I run across straight roles. I hate the obvious stuff, I just don't respond to it.»

«The people in the village were real poor, so none of the children had any toys. But this one little boy had gotten an old enema bag and filled it with rocks, and he would go around and whap the other children across the face with it. Man, I think my heart almost broke. Later the boy came up and offered to give me the toy. This was too much! I reached out my hand, but then he ran away. I chased him down and took the enema bag. He cried a little, but that's the way of these people.»

«You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it.»