"Writing is also a profession, and, at its best, an honourable one. It has been made honourable by those who have already been members of it. Whether you like it or not, every time you set pen to paper you’re staring at the same blank space that confronted Milton, Melville, Emily Bronte, Dostoevsky and George Eliot, George Orwell and William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf and William Carlos Williams, not to mention the latest hero, Gabriel Garcia Marquez."

"Yes, as my swift days near their goal 'Tis all that I implore In life and death a chainless soul With courage to endure."

"With wide-embracing love Thy Spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. Though earth and moon were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee. There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou — Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed."