I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him, ... This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response.

Western Attitudes Toward Death.

This book is called "Blue Nights" because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days,the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness. Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning.

I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn't realize then that it's the same impulse. It's make-believe. It's performance.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.

You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that.