“Whore or courtesan, she put on a great little show.”

“I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:It is what you fear.I do not fear it: I have been there.--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”

“Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts Nor the woman in the ambulance Whore red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly....Oh my God, what am IThat these late mouths should cry openIn a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers”

“I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.”

“I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I’ll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time.”

“A little thing, like children putting flowers in my hair, can fill up the widening cracks in my self-assurance like soothing lanolin. I was sitting out on the steps today, uneasy with fear and discontent. Peter, (the little boy-across-the-street) with the pointed pale face, the grave blue eyes and the slow fragile smile came bringing his adorable sister Libby of the flaxen braids and the firm, lyrically-formed child-body. They stood shyly for a little, and then Peter picked a white petunia and put it in my hair. Thus began an enchanting game, where I sat very still, while Libby ran to and fro gathering petunias, and Peter stood by my side, arranging the blossoms. I closed my eyes to feel more keenly the lovely delicate-child-hands, gently tucking flower after flower into my curls. "And now a white one," the lisp was soft and tender. Pink, crimson, scarlet, white ... the faint pungent odor of the petunias was hushed and sweet. And all my hurts were smoothed away. Something about the frank, guileless blue eyes, the beautiful young bodies, the brief scent of the dying flowers smote me like the clean quick cut of a knife. And the blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.”

“It is a terrible thing to be so open: it is as if my heart put on a face and walked into the world.”