We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.

He seemed unaware of the messiness of the arrangement.

I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.

I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.

You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.

But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.

I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.

All men are fools, and all men are knights where women are concerned.

I know it may not be an easy thing to do, but with the right person by their side, they can conquer anything.

She'd decided long ago that life was a long journey. She would be strong and she would be weak, and both would be okay.

For an outpour of love there is always a first partaker

I wish I had an extra day with my mom sometimes. Or another hour in the day with my family, husband and children.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen.

It is important how we view the youth of our nation. To simply consider them as new age voters will be a big mistake. They are the new age power.

Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.

my poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.