“I'm a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can't see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.”

“I don't want to know more about her; don't want to know her weaknesses or calculate them. What I have is not for her; he gives me to understand she would not know what to do with it; it's not her fault. --One is married and there is nothing to be done.-- Yet he has said to me, I would marry you if I could, meaning: I want very much to marry you. I offended him a bit by not being moved. It's other things he's said that are the text I'm living by. I really do not know if I want any form of public statement, status, code; such as marriage. There's nothing more private and personal than the life of a mistress, is there? Outwardly, no one even knows we are responsible to each other....'This is the creature that has never been'--he told me a line of poetry about that unicorn, translated from German. A mythical creature. Un paradis inventé. ”

“...with an understanding of Shakespeare there comes a release from the gullibility that makes you prey to the great shopkeeper who runs the world, and would sell you cheap to illusion.”

“Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.”

“Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.”

“Books don't need batteries.”

“you like to have some cup of tea?-July bent at the doorway and began that day for them as his kind has always done for their kind.”