Language Magic

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.

It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

My friend asked if I wanted a frozen banana. I said, ‘No. But I want a regular banana later so, yeah.’

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.

One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.

My flesh may feel fear; I myself do not.

‘And so it begins. I’ve heard about this.’
I frown. ‘Heard about what?’
‘Babies mean no sex.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true. Otherwise we’d all come from one-child families.’

The only unit of time that matters is heartbeats. Even if the world were totally silent, even in a dark room covered in five layers of foam, you’d be able to count your own heartbeats.