I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts.

is there not an Arabick Proverb which goes, 'No one throws Stones at a Barren Tree'?

Beware of the man who denounces psychiatrists; / he is afraid.

It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.

fame is merely the fact of being misunderstood by millions of people.

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.