Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world.

The sweetness that all longed for night and day. Some tragedy might be idly guessed at-loss or illness. She had the luminosity of those about to die.

Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.

... one doesn't really profit from experience; one merely learns to predict the next mistake.

Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please.

When you realize someone is trying to hurt you, it hurts less." "Unless you love them.

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.