“Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day - like writing a poem or saying a prayer.”

“Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.”

“Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.”

“For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.”

“For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.”

“Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

“I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.”

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.”

“I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.”

“I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light.”

“I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.”

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”

“It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.”

“Life is a gift, given in trust - like a child.”

“Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.”

“One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life.”

“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.”

“Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”

“The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness.”

“The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.”

“The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.”

“The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.”

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.”

“Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.”

“To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.”

“What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. Look at us. We run a tightrope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now! This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of.”