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The wind blew cold, and he was freezing, but he did not notice that he was freezing, for within him was a counter-frost, fear.

I thus am able to conceive of the opacity of the other for me, without reproach for my opacity for him. To feel in solidarity with him or to build with him or to like what he does, it is not necessary for me to grasp him. It is not necessary to try to become the other (to become other) nor to "make" him in my image. (p. 193)

Roots make the commonality of errantry and exile, for in both instances roots are lacking. We must begin with that. ("Errantry, Exile")

As far as my identity is concerned, I will take care of it myself. That is, I shall not allow it to become cornered in any essence; I shall also pay attention to not mixing it into any amalgam. Rather, it does not disturb me to accept that there are places where my identity is obscure to me, and the fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it. (p. 192)

This is why we stay with poetry. And despite our consenting to aIl the indisputable technologies; despite seeing the political leap that must be managed, the horror of hunger and ignorance, torture and massacre to be conquered, the full load of knowledge to be tamed, the weight of every piece of machinery that we shall finally control, and the exhausting flashes as we pass from one era to another-from forest to city, from story to computer-at the bow there is still sornething we now share: this murmur, cloud or rain or peaceful smoke. We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. ("The Open Boat")

If we examine the process of "understanding" people and ideas from the perspective of Western thought, we discover that its basis is this requirement for transparency. In order to understand and thus accept you, I have to measure your solidity with the ideal scale providing me with grounds to make comparisons and, perhaps, judgments. I have to reduce. (p. 189-90)

Agree not merely to the right to difference but, carrying this further, agree also to the right to opacity that is not enclosure within an impenetrable autarchy but subsistence within an irreducible singularity. (p. 190)

Diversity, the quantifiable totality of every possible difference, is the motor driving universal energy, and it must be safe guarded from assimilations, from fashions passively accepted as the norm, and from standardized customs. ("Poetics," p. 30)

Creolization ... is a new and original dimension allowing each person to be there and elsewhere, rooted and open, lost in the mountains and free beneath the sea, in harmony and in errantry. ("Poetics," p. 34)

I am afraid of Mr. Powell. I am more afraid of him than I have ever been of shadows or the thunder or when you look through the little bubble in the glass of the window in the upstairs hall and all of the out-of-doors stretches and twists its neck.

If there are soldiers who miss the fury of combat, who find themselves tortured by the desire to return to its flames, I cannot number myself in their company. I have no wish ever to return to Keating or to Afghanistan, and most of my men feel the same. However, the bond that kept us together as a unit, a team, is something that I long for and continue to cherish. It is also something that is very much alive.

Deep in the brush filth above the north pasture a rabbit gave the shrill death cry before the soft owl fell from the moon, and she thought: 'Deed, it's a hard world for little things.