“I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love.”

“But when Ellen throws at me that I have never had to struggle I feel like saying, 'Maybe. But I have had to learn to be capable in a hundred ways that were no pleasure or nourishment really. If I had not been rich, I might have become a good painter.' Instead, right now I had better get the silver out and see what needs polishing.”

“When grace is given it comes to us as joy, maybe, but it can also be earned, I am convinced, through the rigorous examination of the sources of pain.”

“For any writer who wants to keep a journal, be alive to everything, not just to what you're feeling, but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you're reading.”

“When I speak of life and love as expanding with age, sex seems the least important thing. At any age we grow by the enlarging of consciousness, by learning a new language, or a new art or craft (gardening?) that implies a new way of looking at the universe. Love is one of the great enlargers of the person because it requires us to "take in" the stranger and to understand him, and to exercise restraint and tolerance as well as imagination to make the relationship work.”

“Nothing moves fast in Texas except the windmillsAnd the hawk that rises up with a clatter of wings.(Nothing more startling there than sudden motion,Everything is so still.)”

“The more our bodies fail us, the more naked and more demanding is the spirit, the more open and loving we can become if we are not afraid of what we are and of what we feel. I am not a phoenix yet, but here among the ashes, it may be that the pain is chiefly that of new wings trying to push through.”