I think that passion if really intense is always destructive if not to the two involved, always to other people.

And I refuse to feel guilty about not letter-writing either. There are times when one can, times when one can't. In the times when an enormous amount of living is going on, one can't.

Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.

It is always hard to hear the buried truth from another person.

...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.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.