I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

The first time I saw a fingerbowl was at the home of my benefactress. [...] The water had a few cherry blossoms in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms.

I find that in a novel I can get more of life, perhaps not such intense life, but certainly more of life than in poetry.

Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.

I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.