It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another-but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

On all levels American society is rigged. I am troubled by the cynical immorality of my country. It cannot survive on this basis.

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one.

Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain.

One pays for everything, the trick is not to pay too much of anything for anything.

I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.

It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?