There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.

I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played.

I believe that children long for form just as grownups do, and that it releases rather than cramps creative energy.

It is curious how any making of order makes one feel mentally ordered, ordered inside.

So let the world go, but hold fast to joy.

I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines. I write too many letters and too few poems.

True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root.