Lunches are just not good. They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning's work.

It's extraordinary how little two people can understand each other and how cruel two people who are fond of each other can be to each other - there is practically no cruelty so awful because their power to hurt is so great.

When you change the way you look at a thing, the thing itself changes...By mastering feelings, she had come to understand the meaning of discipline and its reward: freedom and power.

...I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except when I'm making love. Two things when you forget time, when nothing exists except the moment--the moment of writing, the moment of love. That perfect concentration is bliss.

Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets -- they're more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.

I cannot understand why poetry is not taught at schools as a way of seeing, a quick, untiring path to essentials.

It is the place of renewal and of safety, where for a little while there will be no harm or attack and, while every sense is nourished, the soul rests.