“After that dark woman you search for someone who will fit into the irregular corners of your heart.”

“Oh dark woman With a shawl and ribsI could have served him betterWith my shanties.But men do love the shimmerAnd so his ghostIs hacked in half between usThe dark me and the dark you.”

“Life, after all, was a secret with the self. The more one gave out, the less there remained for the center--that center which she coveted for herself and recognized instantly in others. Fruits had it, the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay. Some of course were flawed or hollow in there. Many, in fact. ”

“I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love.”

“Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.”

“That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.”

“I crossed the room, and what you did was to feel my hair over and over again and in different ways, touch it, with the palm of your hand... felt it, strands of hair, with your fingers, touched it as if it were cloth, the way a child touches its favorite surfaces.”