The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.

Poetry is easier to learn than prose. Once you have learned it you can use it as a light and a laser. It shows up your true situation and it helps you cut through it.

Why did I walk so purposefully in a straight line? Where would it take me? He went round and round and we got there all the same.

Some people are happy when they are at the sea; I'm happy when I'm standing in front of a shelf of books. It feels like the known place and also the beginning of a new adventure. It has that simultaneous paradoxical effect of making me feel absolutely calm and very excited.

We live in a world of buy it or leave it. Love does not signify.

I am not tempted by God but I love his trappings.

Quoting her mother: The trouble with a book is you never know what's in it until it's too late!