Woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence? It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life.

It is terribly amusing how many different climates of feelings one can go through in one day.

How hard it is to have the beautiful interdependence of marriage and yet be strong in oneself alone.

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 is the striving after perfection that makes one an artist. It is the sense that one is imperfect, unfulfilled, unfinished. One attempts by a superhuman effort to fill the gap, to leap over it, to finish it in another medium. And one creates a third and separate thing: 'Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China. But he discovered America.