I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

What will survive of us is love.

If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but I am.'

Any memory for the most part depending on chance.

It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.

I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any - after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think?

I like spaghetti because you don't have to take your eyes off the book to pick about among it, it's all the same.