Quotes from Leonard Michaels

Reasons are whores.

There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.

Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.

I read assiduously. I kept in touch with my species.

Never to have to think of yourself as white is a luxory that makes you deeply stupid.

Stories should be natural as apples, brief as lust, long as a thought.

In 1982, Raphael Nachman, visiting lecturer in mathematics at the university in Cracow, declined the tour of Auschwitz, where his grandparents had died, and asked instead to visit the ghetto where they had lived.

Courage is continuing to perform your daily tasks, and being hopeful despite the odds, not inflicting your fears on others, and remaining sensitive to their needs and expectations, and also not supposing, because you're dying, nothing matters any more.

So many writers make dope glamorous; a form of romantic transgression, or world-weariness, or poetic sensitivity, or hipness. Mainly it's the stuff of ritualistic communion among inarticulate bores.

Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.

Most offensive is what he imagines a person thinks about himself.

Feb. 1, 1965 Storm late at night, heavy rain, a thunderous racket, the windows shaking. I heard my name called. A woman's voice in hell pleading with me to join her.

La peggiore notizia – se è pubblicata su un giornale – con ogni probabilità non è capitata a chi legge, e offre un collegamento di rassicurante normalità con la vita quotidiana.

So clumsy, yet her dinner parties were splendid, prepared at unbelievable speed. She hated to cook. Chewing gum, cigarettes, candy, drugs, alcohol, and taxicabs took her from Monday to Friday.