Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.

Innocence is not pure so much as pleased, Always expectant, bright-eyed, self-enclosed

Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything - except itself.

How unnatural the imposed view, imposed by a puritanical ethos, that passionate love belongs only to the young, that people are dead from the neck down by the time they are forty, and that any deep feeling, any passion after that age, is either ludicrous or revolting!

I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.

Poetry finds its perilous equilibrium somewhere between music and speech.

in the very long run any success devours - and perhaps also corrupts.