People are always talking about the joys of youth-but, oh, how youth can suffer!

How slowly one comes to understand anything!

The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes. Under all the superficial praise of the creative is the desire to kill. It is the old war between the mystic and the nonmystic, a war to the death.

There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.

The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.

It's extraordinary how little two people can understand each other and how cruel two people who are fond of each other can be to each other - there is practically no cruelty so awful because their power to hurt is so great.

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