I am a forward-looking girl and don’t stay where I am. “Left right, Be bright,” as I said in my poem. That’s on days when I am one big bounce, and have to go careful then not to be a nuisance. But later I get back to my own philosophical outlook that keeps us all kissable.

We carry our own wilderness with us.

If a lady comes up to you and tells you that your dear mama is lying in a faint on the pavement round the corner, don’t you believe her, don’t have anything to do with her, do not go with her into the cab. It is the White Slave Traffic.

I don’t think Auden liked my poetry very much, he’s very Anglican.

But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever...

See the cat at love, rolling with its sweetheart, up and over, with shriek and moan. But if a person comes by, they break away, sit separate upon a fence washing their faces – and might never have met at all.

I’m alive today, therefore I’m just as much a part of our time as everybody else. The times will just have to enlarge themselves to make room for me, won’t they, and for everybody else.

If there wasn’t death, I think you couldn’t go on.

I like to see cats in movement. A galloping cat is a fine sight. See it cross the road in a streak, cursed by the drivers of motor cars and buses, dodging the butcher’s bicycle, coming safe to the kerb and bellying under its home gate.

Death’s not a separation or alteration or parting; it’s just a one-handled door.