The silence of a shut park does not sound like country silence: it is tense and confined.

in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to know you pick up as you go along.

Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.

One can suffer a convulsion of one's entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It's not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other's existences.

Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified.... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling.

Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.

to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.