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

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

It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness--however temporary, however flimsy--of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another.

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

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.

We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do-we do it all the time.

If I decided to send this to you, where would I send it? When I think of writing the whole address on the envelope I am paralyzed. It's too painful to think of you in the same place with your life going on in the same way, minus me. And to think of you not there, you somewhere else but I don't know where that is, is worse.