For me to write I have to be, a, alone, and b, know that nobody is going to question me. I write the way a thief steals; it's a little covert.

Later as the day cools and they have gone in, the cry of the corncrake will carry across those same fields and over the lake to the blue-hazed mountain, such a lonely evening sound to it, like the lonely evening sound of the mothers, saying it is not our fault that we weep so, it is nature's fault that makes us first full, then empty.

Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.

Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.

Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.

Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.

I knew I had done something awful. I had killed love, before I even knew the enormity of what love meant.