Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication. -Aunt Beast

I got so discouraged, I almost stopped writing. It was my 12-year-old son who changed my mind when he said to me, "Mother, you've been very cross and edgy with us and we notice you haven't been writing. We wish you'd go back to the typewriter. That did a lot of good for my false guilts about spending so much time writing. At that point, I acknowledged that I am a writer and even if I were never published again, that's what I am."

the artist is not separate from the work and therefore cannot judge it.

If our love for each other really is participatory, then all other human relationships nourish it; it is inclusive, never exclusive.

Integrity, like humility, is a quality which vanishes the moment we are conscious of it in ourselves. We see it only in others.

When a bride insists on telling her lover everything, I suspect she is looking for a father, not a husband.

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.