It is sometimes the most fragile things that have the power to endure and become sources of strength.

I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.

In poetry compromise is fatal. In action of any cooperative sort it is inevitable. The thing is to find the balance.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Inside my mother's death / I lay and could not breathe.

He [the cat] wound himself around her legs, purring the purr of ardent desire like a kettle coming to a boil and then bubbling very fast.

There was such a thing as women's work and it consisted chiefly, Hilary sometimes thought, in being able to stand constant interruption and keep your temper. . . .