Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.

each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature.

If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.

[In old age] there is a childlike innocence, often, that has nothing to do with the childishness of senility. The moments become precious . . .

Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.

I know you have much to bear with in me, and I really do sometimes in you, but I have never looked at friendship in a deep sense as easy or entirely comfortable.

Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.