I don’t want to stand before you like a thing, shrewd, secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action. And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

Every angel is terrifying.

May I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.... How we waste our afflictions!... [T]hey're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year—; not only a season—: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.

Stand up during supper and walk outdoors, and keep on walking.

The hero is strangely akin to those who die young.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

I am a house gutted by fire where only the guilty sometimes sleep before the punishment that devours them hounds them out in the open.