One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: It's four o clock. At five I have my abyss.

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.

Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.