...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.

A holiday gives one a chance to look backward and forward; to reset oneself by an inner compass.

Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another.

Once more I realize that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

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

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!