It may be a childish torment, but we do not get to choose our demons.

How hollow to have no secrets left; you shake yourself and nothing rattles. You're boneless as an anemone.

Does love always form, like a pearl, around the hardened bits of life?

When I meet a woman whose energy falters at the first barrier,she seems to fade beside my mother.

I love going to writers' colonies in pastoral settings where there's nothing to do, but either walk around or read a book or work on your book.

Surely words are just the background music when passion pounces on a soul.

Perhaps love is a minor madness. And as with madness, it's unendurable alone. The one person who can relieve us is of course the sole person we cannot go to: the one we love. So instead we seek out allies, even among strangers and wives, fellow patients who, if they can't touch the edge of our particular sorrow, have felt something that cuts nearly as deep.