'No respite, no reprieve. I saw everything as it were : vivid as a kestrel, winding, or steadfast as a learned scholar, learning. We experience the image, though we remain outside of it.'
'I swear to sit still and not listen to you. My many bad ideas have had me locked up in glass. No matter now. I'm still free, not stillborn.'
'Yes, yes, I was made for you.'
'I felt I had surprised the street-life before me by breaking into it and entering it at its own pace. No one looked up, and, really, I saw little. It all went on around me. Each moment, with its own life, went forward.' Philadelphia, 4.17.10
'I had to face an idea, one made of time and memory. Split by the harsh whiteness of reality, things fell to either side -- either the real had made me, or I had made the unreal. One factor needed the controls.'
'This was not a dreamscape; this was real life - the heavy, drawn sky, the flat, planar incline, and - yes - the weird figures cresting the hill. What they were was all they were not. To recreate this moment, I knew, even with words, would ever be impossible. Yet, I give it now to you.' Arneytown, NJ
'Reflected in some light glory, even the backyard graves were telling plain stories.' The old Quaker Meeting House, in Plumstead PA.
'Yes, I am lonely; but I am a place on the map in a fear-land of Hell called mis-guided justice and purloined foolishness. You shall never jar me, and I shall never know your amends.'
'The fast and the steady, where the finks drink and the marmots connect. Once I was alone, and - standing steady and straight - I walked right in as if I owned the place.'
'Out of your reach, oh Land of the Lost. The Great Father is indeed waiting for you.'