My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.

The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.

poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

Do we always make our freedom out of someone else's bondage?

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

It is curious how any making of order makes one feel mentally ordered, ordered inside.

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.