No one should be allowed to give back the gift of life, unless they are very old and full of tears, when the body outlives the spirit, when they should be allowed to join the others who've already gone.

Another thing that seems quite helpful to the creative process is having babies. It does not detract at all from one's creativity. It reminds one that there is always more where that came from and there is never any shortage of ideas or of the ability to create. The process of being pregnant and then of having the baby and getting up in the night only puts one more in touch with this fecund part of one's self.

Of course you have to believe in destiny; that everything is sheer chance is an intolerable notion.

Nowadays most people wear black most of the time anyway: go to a literary party and one would imagine everyone there was in perpetual mourning for their lives.

Yet this perhaps is what love does, or the memory of it; it sucks the life from the living, glorying body and leaves it, when love has gone, a shred, a simulacrum - dross, to be swept up from the factory floor, pitiful and dusty, useless... Do all men and women feel love before they die? This force, this source of light, that lies before the sun; glances off mountains and lakes, blinding and dazzling, on a Sunday afternoon; so brilliant you have to guard your soul, fold your arms to shield your heart from the very memory of it.

I am not cynical. I am just old. I know what is going to happen next.

Be bold, but not too bold. Have courage, but not too much.