prayer is whenever we consciously try to get in contact with the numinous, the ineffable, the marvelous.

A mystic is a person who sees the facts as inadequate.

You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.

And there's no getting around the fact that all life lives at the expense of another life.

Reading is a creative activity. You have to visualize the characters, you have to hear what the voices sound like.

It's a very American trait, this wanting people to think well of us. It's a young want, and I am ashamed of it in myself. I am not always a good daughter, even though my lacks are in areas different from her complaints. Haven't I learned yet that the desire to be perfect is always disastrous and, at the least, loses me in the mire of false guilt?

A life lived in chaos is an impossibility for the artist. No matter how unstructured may seem the painter's garret in Paris or the poet's pad in Greenwich Village, the artist must have some kind of order or he will proudce a very small body of work. To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.