The tragic thing about learning from experience is I fear that one can only learn from one's own experience. Other people's - other nations' - experiences simply do not help. They can be imaginatively learned from. But people do not act on other people's experiences.

It is dark now. The snow is deep blue and the ocean nearly black. It is time for some music.

I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played.

Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation

making order out of disorder any time, anywhere, can be regarded as a sacrament.

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.

Do not deprive me of my age. I have earned it.