Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.

How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?

Each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of "form" to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance.

The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.

All actors are whores. They want only one thing: to seduce you.