“Very few people do this any more. It's too risky. First of all, it's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.”

“God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.”

“My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.”

“I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”

“I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.Clouds pass and disperse.Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?Is it for such I agitate my heart?I am incapable of more knowledge.What is this, this faceSo murderous in its strangle of branches? -Its snaky acids kiss.It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faultsThat kill, that kill, that kill.From the poem "Elm", 19 April 1962”

“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour.”

“Then it hit me and I just blurted, 'I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”