Why have I so little control? It is the case of much waste and pain in my life.

. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.

Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.

Most of a modest woman's life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every year, was made obvious.

What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice.

A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing.

and then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.