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.

There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.

I tell the gods are still alive / And they are not consoling.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine - why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity?

How slowly one comes to understand anything!

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

Mountains define you. You cannot define / Them.