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

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

And I can't say it now. I can't say what I want to say. I hold you-- I-- I clutch you, because I love you so desperately, and time is so short, we have such a little time in which to live and be young, even at best, and I put my arms around you and hold you because I want to love you while I can and I want to know I'm loving you, only it doesn't mean anything because you aren't afraid. You aren't frightened so that you want to clutch it all while you can.

There is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life

You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn.

A community to be truly community, must have a quality of unselfconsciousness about it.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.