Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

So this was fame at last! Nothing but a vast debt to be paid to the world in energy, blood, and time.

I see a certain order in the universe and math is one way of making it visible.

Try making a poem as if it were a table, clear and solid, standing there outside you.

No partner in a love relationship... should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.

...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.

How much hope, expectation, and sheer hard work goes into the smallest success! There is no being sure of anything except that whatever has been created will change in time.