I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines. I write too many letters and too few poems.

So this was fame at last! Nothing but a vast debt to be paid to the world in energy, blood, and time.

The body is a universe in itself and must be held as sacred as anything in creation....It is dangerous to forget the body as sacramental.

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

At any moment solitude may put on the face of loneliness.

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.

Most people have to talk so they won't hear.