[In old age] there is a childlike innocence, often, that has nothing to do with the childishness of senility. The moments become precious . . .

Try making a poem as if it were a table, clear and solid, standing there outside you.

For me the moral dilemma this past year has been how to make peace with the unacceptable.

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.

Where music thundered let the mind be still, Where the will triumphed let there be no will, What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.

The trouble is, old age is not interesting until one gets there. It's a foreign country with an unknown language to the young and even to the middle-aged.

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.