“Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?”

“She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.”

“When I told him on the phone that after all you and I would not be getting married, he said "Oh-oh. Do you think you'll ever manage to get another one?" If I'd objected to his saying that he would naturally have said it was a joke. And it was a joke. I have not managed to get another one but perhaps have not been in the best condition to try.”

“I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.”

“We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do--we do it all the time.”

“There are people who carry decency and optimism around with them, who seem to cleanse every atmosphere they settle in, and you can't tell such people things, it is too disruptive.”

“This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all.The thing that was your bright treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.This is what happens....Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.”