Memoirists wish to tell their mind, not their story.

Writing was the soul of everything else ... Wanting to be a writer was wanting to be a person.

The future is here, now, and the past is full of actual deeds, real history. Utopias hardly have the meat on their bones to sustain a people in grave times.

Looking repeatedly into the past, you do not necessarily become fascinated with your own life, but rather with the phenomenon of memory.

Writing is so hard. And then, sometimes, it is so bewilderingly easy.

poetry is the sung voice of accurate perception.

Pondering was the highest vocation... Pondering was a special kind of thinking. It was not done in the mind, that chilly place, but in the heart, where the real mystery of intelligence - intuition - rather than thought lay catlike and feminine, ready to pounce.