My life burned inside me. Even such as it was, it was the only record of me, and it was my only creation, and something in me would not accept that it was insignificant.

Lovers are allowed to be as cruel as anything to the one who dissappoints them.

Novels are completed when they are finished, but the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written... I was not at all the same person, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, as I had been when I began. A memoir may always be retrospective, but the past is not where its action takes place.

Did anyone ever hear of an intelligent fantasy?

Let me just say that I am not often lonely in country places. In cities I am, like the writers of the letters. Nature doesn't break your heart: other people do. Yet, we cannot live apart from each other in bowers feeding on nectar. We're in this together, this getting through our lives, as the fact that we are word-users shows.

..though silence must add intensity to your intimate moments, it must also shrivel your soul to lie beside someone who doesn't talk to you.

Do the thing that's less passive. Do the active thing. There's more of the human in that.