It is possible, I suppose, that we are returning to a Dark Age. What is frightening is that violence is not only represented by nations, but everywhere walks among us freely.

There the door is always open into the “holy” — growth, birth, death.

The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.

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.

...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.

There was such a thing as women's work and it consisted chiefly, Hilary sometimes thought, in being able to stand constant interruption and keep your temper. . . .

Gardening is an instrument of grace.