But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of 'I' that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratching on the paper…I…I…I…I…I…I.

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.

I, to you, am lost in the gorgeous errors of flesh.

The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.

I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.

The artist's life nourishes itself on the particular, the concrete.

I must not be selfless: develop a sense of self. A solidness that can't be attacked.