Is it perhaps the one necessity of love, that it be needed? And the one great human tragedy that it so rarely is?

...I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except when I'm making love. Two things when you forget time, when nothing exists except the moment--the moment of writing, the moment of love. That perfect concentration is bliss.

I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I long for open time, with no obligations except toward the inner world and what is going on there.

we are never done with thinking about our parents, I suppose, and come to know them better long after they are dead than we ever did when they were alive.

My musical genius reached its apex thirty years ago when I played the triangle in Haydn's children's symphony, so I could not play unless you needed someone to make one sustained note!

If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the Métro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.

When addressed, a Gentleman Cat does not move a muscle. He looks as if he hasn't heard.