Poets are the leaven in the lump of civilization.

Mythology is like gravity, inconvenient at times, but necessary for cohesion.

The maxims for success laid out by the powerful are never much good as guides for those who aren't powerful.

We don't get offered crises, they arrive.

Love between women is seen as a paradigm of love between equals, and that is perhaps its greatest attraction.

Humor is an antidote to isolation.

The surprise of animals... in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo.