if death becomes cheap it is the watcher, not the dying, who is poisoned.

A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.

One's palate is reborn every morning!

The dangerous thing about hate is that it seems so reasonable.

The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age - what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.

It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) -to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart. When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection, so deeply unrepeatable, of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) it's the affection I find richer. It's that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colors.