“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.”

“That's the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective. Then you begin to feel crowded.”

“The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.”

“...hate suits him better than forgiveness. Immersed in hate, he doesn't have to do anything; he can be paralyzed, and the rigidty of hatred makes a kind of shelter for him.”

“Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.”

“There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.”

“Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.”