When you wrote it didn't matter if hysteria sometimes came up in your face and voice (unless, of course, you let it find its way into your "literary voice") because writing was done in merciful privacy and silence. Even if you were partly out of your mind it might turn out to be all right: you could try for control even harder than Blanche Dubois was said to have tried, and with luck you could still bring off a sense of order and sanity on the page for the reader. Reading, after all, was a thing done in privacy and silence too.

Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.

Every man has a right to keep his own sentiments if he pleases.

Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn't much different, finally, from any other kind of dying.

What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once you've started it was terribly difficult to stop; soon you were saying "I'm sorry, of course you're right", and "Whatever you think is best", and "you're the most wonderful and valuable thing int he world", and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people.

if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.