“Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.”

“All life is a rhythm,” she said as I sat up. “All death is rhythm suspended, a syncopation before life resumes.”

“As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.”

“Man invented clothing to cover the superficial and to discover the inside.”

“The old customs are dead, and we keep trying on new ones, like badly fitting clothes.”

“Why give up before we try
Feel the lows before the highs
Clip our wings before we fly away
I can't say I came prepared
I'm suspended in the air
Won't you come be in the sky with me”

“I pondered exactly how future biographers would go about writing the biographies of authors without letters. It's not like email and "chat" and whatnot will fill the void. Online journals help a little, but they are not, generally, the truly honest sorts of things that letters were, and only a few authors keep them. I tried for years to keep up letter writing, but was defeated in the end by too many unreliable correspondents.”

“No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.”

“Models, even male models — how small they've gotten! It looks great for the clothes, but it's not what you want in real life. Why do we have to keep looking at ourselves and measuring?”

“The minute our correspondence becomes obligatory, there's no point in keeping touch at all.”