Do I think there's life after death? No, I think my books are my life after death.

instant intimacy was too often followed by disillusion.

There the door is always open into the “holy” — growth, birth, death.

Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.

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

There were moments ... when it seemed that all one could be asked was just to keep the ashtrays clean, the bed made, the wastebaskets emptied, as if one never got to the real things because of the constant exhausting battle to keep ordinary life from falling apart.

How slowly one comes to understand anything!