“[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.”

“Not easy to state the change you made.If I’m alive now, I was dead,Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.”

“Even amongst fierce flames/ The golden lotus can be planted.”

“Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don’t love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering and reordering the chaos of experience.”

“I have stitched life into me like a rare organ”

“The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.”

“How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this. I need someone to pour myself into.”