I had decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover.

I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living.

Worse even than your maddening song, your silence.

I think the coming of spring, the stars overhead, the first snowfall and so on are gifts for a child, a young poet.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

For the few little successes I may seem to have, there are acres of misgivings and self-doubt.

I had always imagined myself hitching up on to my elbows on the delivery table after it was all over - dead white, of course, with no makeup and from the awful ordeal, but smiling and radiant, with my hair down to my waist, and reaching out for my first little squirmy child and saying its name, whatever it was.