The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires.

It isn’t for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for that long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.

It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.

…I want first of all – in fact, as an end to these other desires – to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central cor...

And so I miss the fertilization that might come from a contact. And for me–yes, I think I might as well admit it–fertilization does come a great deal from contacts. Why then do I avoid...

If one sets aside timefor a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition,that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is...

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...

The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize.

# “I saw the most beautiful cat today. It was sitting by the side of the road, its two front feet neatly and graciously together. Then it gravely swished around its tail to completely encircle...

Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It’s like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done…...

I believe that true identity is found . . . in creative activity springing from within. It is found, paradoxically, when one loses oneself. Woman can best refind herself in some kind of creative activity...

And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense—no—but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like...

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

Woman must come of age by herself — she must find her true center alone.

It is an oyster, with small shells clinging to its humped back. Sprawling and uneven, it has the irregularity of something growing. It looks rather like the house of a big family, pushing out one...

The beach is not a place to work; to read, write or to think.

All living relationships are in process ofchange, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms. But there is no singlefixed form to express such a changing relationship.

For Sayonara, literally translated, ‘Since it must be so,’ of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by...

You can’t just write and write and put things in a drawer. They wither without the warm sun of someone else’s appreciation.

There comes a moment when the things one has written, even a traveler’s memories, stand up and demand a justification. They require an explanation. They query, ‘Who am I? What is my name? Why am...

by and large,mothers and house wives are the only workers who do not have regular time off.They are the great vacationless class

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partnersdo not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate...

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one’s own experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a...

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won’t grow up with an aching void in them–like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never...

After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.

It is the wilderness inthe mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is astranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one...

Him that I love, I wish to be free — even from me.

Only when one is connected to one’s inner core is one connected to others. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be re-found through solitude.

Out of the welter of life, a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle. We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us....

Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distraction…What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive.

it takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeded.

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

Yesterday’s fairy tale is today’s fact. The magician is only one step ahead of his audience.

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