I cannot understand why poetry is not taught at schools as a way of seeing, a quick, untiring path to essentials.

The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory. Unable to fulfill it, he goes mad. But when the artist is a woman she fulfills it at the expense of herself as a woman.

Deep down there was understanding, not of the facts of our lives so much as of our essential natures.

It feels a long way up and down from zero.

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.

a poet never feels useful.

You will always be here with me; As long as I live, A towering figure of love.