I thank God that this refreshing childhood vision still lives inside me in all its fullness of color and sound. This is what keeps my mind untouched by wastage, keeps it from withering and running dry. It is the sacred drop of immortal water which prevents me from dying. When I wish to speak of the sea, woman, or God in my writing, I gaze down in my breast and listen carefully to what the child within me says. He dictates to me; and if it sometimes happens that I come close to these great forces of the sea, woman, and God, approach them by means of words and depict them, I owe it to the child who still lives within me. I become a child again to enable myself to view the world always for the first time, with virgin eyes.

'Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality,' says one of my favorite Byzantine mystics. I did this when a child; I do it now as …

Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force. To discover its meaning you must let it burst inside you like a bomb and in this way …

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

The pennycandystore beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality

I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, t…

'I would take a twirling baton and use it as my 'icaphone' - that's what I called it - and lay a towel on the floor as my stage.'