It is only framed in space that beauty blooms; only in space are events, and objects and people unique and significant and therefore beautiful.

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

People talk about love as if it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers.

...the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom. The only real security is... living in the present and accepting it as it is now.

Packing is chiefly planning -- if it is

Splutter, splutter. Yes - we're off - we're rising. But why start off with an engine like that? But it smooths out now, like a long sigh, like a person breathing easily, freely. Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring - sustained note of power and joy. We turn from the lights of the city; we pivot on a dark wing; we roar over the earth. The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it!

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.