At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.

That complete statement which is literature.

The truer the facts the better the fiction.

Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously.

You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.

Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and it seems sheer joy and buoyancy.

For now she need not think of anybody. She coud be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.