The skin of everyday appearances stretched over such shamelessness, such consuming explosions of lust.

Row, row, row your boat. Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.

Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?

The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair.

I want my stories to move people ... to feel some kind of reward from the writing.

I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide - sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself.