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Similarly, anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds.

These our great natural rights we keep to ourselves; we will not have them tampered with; respecting them we give to you no commission whatsoever.

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not others, at some times and not at other times.

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

The only thing I have done religiously in my life is keep a journal. I have hundreds of them, filled with feathers, flowers, photographs, and words - without locks, open on my shelves.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Let there be no inscription upon my tomb; let no man write my epitaph: no man can write my epitaph.