I've been writing most of my life; it's just something I do.

To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.

You can say that literature is about topics like love, death, and all that, but I think there is only one topic that applies to all literature and that is belonging.

If you write, and you are really alone (writing is a lonely thing), you learn to be alone without suffering. When you read, you also learn to do this. When you write, you deal with things.

I was going to be a memory when I grew up.

I knew little, but at least I knew that: no one could speak for someone else. That although we might want to tell other people's stories, we always end up telling our own.

I am still trying to find out things. And I inevitably tell myself the story in different ways every time I think about it.

You're looking for something, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'm looking. Writing is a lot about that. When you write a poem. When you write a novel.

Everything has been said and everything has been done, but you still feel like you are looking for something.

For me, writing is a way of finding out about things I didn't know before I began writing.

When you read a novel, you know what to expect because you've been reading novels for a long time.

... I didn't know whether to feel angry at her for making me part of her suicide or just to feel angry at myself for letting her go.

...you are not what you seem - you're a Sylph - you leave and the air retains your image - you haunt me...

Gods must be crazyFlowers must be daisyClouds must be hazyWinds must be lazyWhat else it could be…My heart must be in love lately…

Any honest inquiry into the reality of nature also yields insights about ourselves.

At one point my dad called me and said, 'You have always been a great salesman. I think it's time you come home and sell swimming pools.'

Massachusetts women as a rule adhere too strongly to old-time conventions.

Dancing is as old as love.

My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. . . . In a gentle way you can shake the world.

I do not know what we should do without the pulpit. We could better spare the sun-the moon, anyway.

If you wish another to keep your secret, first keep it to yourself.