How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery-just stark me.

When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.

Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.

Man is a logical machine run by the scoundrels of emotions.

Vermeer's skill was in combining few colors, mixing little and using layers of lakes and varnishes to build up the illusion of life

The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.

Your white tee, well to me, looks like a nightgown; Make your mama proud, take that thing two sizes down.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been in existence for most of this century.

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other

We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.

I would argue that coffee has been far more important to literature than alcohol.

I think that probably all religions sound bizarre to the people who are not the practitioners of them.

Alcoholism is the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.