After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So m… - James Baldwin

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity — which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves — we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.