“I choose to love this time for oncewith all my intelligence-from "Splittings”

“The longer I live the more I mistrusttheatricality, the false glamour castby performance, the more I know its poverty besidethe truths we are salvaging fromthe splitting-open of our lives.-from "Transcendental Etude”

“If I cling to circumstances I could feelnot responsible. Only she who saysshe did not choose, is the loser in the end.”

“My heart is moved by all I cannot save:so much has been destroyedI have to cast my lot with thosewho age after age, perversely,with no extraordinary power,reconstitute the world.”

“Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people. This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in large part on their understanding of honor. Much of what is narrowly termed "politics" seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once given, need not be re-examined…It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.”

“Behind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?”

“Flags are blossoming now where little else is blossomingand I am bent on fathoming what it means to love my country. The history of this earth and the bones within it?Minerals, traces, rumors I am made from, morsel, minuscule fibre, one womanlike and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of her task?One citizen like and unlike so many, touched and untouched in passing…A patriot is not a weapon. A patriot us one who wrestles for the soul of her countryas she wrestles for her own being, for the soul of his country…”