Awareness of time as flying has some advantages; it precludes boredom, for one thing. It matters little that younger people find older people boring or slow. Older people have a right to resist being rushed, to stand and stare at the fragile world that has become so unspeakably dear to them. For the lucky ones, who will not have to leave while they are still in love with life, there will come a later time when that passion too will fade, but while one is still possessed by that great tenderness, it must be yielded to.

Poetry exists partly to undermine the certainties of an accepted intellectual system, by opening a fissure of awareness at which the reality of the unconquered world may enter.

Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.

The drug which makes sexuality palatable in popular mythology.

The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.

Security is the denial of life

Marriage cannot be a job as it has become.