If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

There is no harvest for the heart alone. The seed of love must be eternally re-sown.

One can get just as much exultation in losing oneself in a little thing as in a big thing. It is nice to think how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy.

When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others, too.

In general, I feel, or I have come to feel, that the richest writing comes not from the people who dedicate themselves to writing alone. I know this is contradicted again and again but I continue to feel it. They don't, of course, write as much, or as fast, but I think it is riper and more satisfying when it does come. One of the difficulties of writing or doing any kind of creative work in America seems to me to be that we put such stress on production and material results. We put a time pressure and a mass pressure on creative work which are meaningless and infantile in that field.

One must go through periods of numbness that are harder to bear than grief.

Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse.