Failure would only be if you had somewhere stopped growing. As far as I can see the whole duty of the artist is to keep on growing.

Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything - except itself.

One thing is certain, and I have always known it - the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.

People who cannot feel punish those who do.

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

Death does frame a person and somehow it is the good that stays.