It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights.

one should discuss one's difficulties only when they are over.

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.

What's the matter with this country is the matter with the lot of us individually - our sense of personality is a sense of outrage.

Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.

Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected.