The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.

You know that you can't make references to the Classics any longer and less and less to the English classics even.

When you see your 40-page essay turned into a "hot tip" in one paragraph in Newsweek, you get anxious about the way your writing has been used.

the process of building a self and its works is always too slow. One is always in arrears to oneself.

One can know worlds one has not experienced, choose a response to life that has never been offered, create an inwardness utterly strong and fruitful.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.

What, I ask, drives me to disorder? How can I diagnose myself? All I feel, most immediately, is the most anguished need for physical love and mental companionship -