In masks outrageous and austere The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile.

When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak, We shall live well--we shall live very well.

I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose.

My lord, adjudge my strength, and set me where I bear a little more than I can bear.

If you would keep your soul From spotted sight or sound, Live like the velvet mole; Go burrow underground.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter's over.

I shall lie folded like a saint, Lapped in a scented linen sheet, On a bedstead striped with bright-blue paint, Narrow and cold and neat.

If any have a stone to throw It is not I, ever or now.

I bear a little more than I can bear.

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There's something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.

An old earthen pipe like myself is dry and thirsty and so a most voracious drinker of life at its source; I'm no more to be split by the vital stream than if I were stone or steel.

It’s certainly TOUGH being AWESOME all the time, but I do it so the kids have someone to look up to!

I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.

I find that a man is as old as his work. If his work keeps him from moving forward, he will look forward with the work.

People are going to think I'm crazy.

I loved every place I lived and traveled. London, Paris, Rome, Venice. I fell hard for Central America and Mexico. In each country, I had fantasies that I could live there.

One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.

I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.

I still feel driven to try to make great shows and to make each episode great.

So that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again.

The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy.