The world has been forced to its knees. Unhappily, we seldom find our way there without being beaten to it by suffering.

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.

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.

How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.

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

To mention a loved object, a person, or a place to someone else is to invest that object with reality.

I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.