I was, after all, the daughter of a man who believed that to be involved with books was to live at the heart of light, and the former wife of a man who shared his faith.

Gardeners, I think, dream bigger dreams than Emperor's.

the hymns were born in the fifteenth or sixteenth century or earlier, and listening to them was like licking an icicle: the same chill, the same purity.

Like most people, most Westerners anyway, I have a sneaking suspicion I am immortal.

If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.

ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.

Important decisions are better made after a good nights sleep

The writer’s life requires courage, patience, empathy, openness. It requires the ability to be alone with oneself. Gentle with oneself. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks.

You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters?

I let the performance speak for itself.

To call yourself a socialist in 2015 is to be an idiot. Socialism fails. Everywhere.

When the bird of the heart begins to sing, too often will reason stop up her ears.

It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.

Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.