When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.

How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.

Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.

These bright roofs, these steep towers, these jewel-lakes, these skeins of railroad line - all spoke to her and she answered. She was glad they were there. She belonged to them and they to her.

Love is a force.... It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product; it produces.

One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much.

Prison life taught him how little one can get along with, and what extraordinary spiritual freedom and peace such simplification can bring. I remember again, ironically, that today more of us in the world have the luxury of choice between simplicity and complication of life. And for the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication. War, prison, survival periods, enforce a form of simplicity on us. The monk and the nun choose it of their own free will. But if one accidentally finds it, as I have for a few days, one finds also the serenity it brings.