Our friends - how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not. Life is a dream surely.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?

The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder.

There must be another life, she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves.

Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth.

Now, aged 50, I'm just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever they are.