The hardest thing we are asked to do in this world is to remain aware of suffering, suffering about which we can do nothing.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.

For poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring life back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only 'living and partly living.

People are always talking about the joys of youth-but, oh, how youth can suffer!

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.

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.

When we admit our vulnerability, we include others. If we deny it, we shut them out.