The world has different owners at sunrise... Even your own garden does not belong to you. Rabbits and blackbirds have the lawns; a tortoise-shell cat who never appears in daytime patrols the brick walls, and a golden-tailed pheasant glints his way through the iris spears.

The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

It is only framed in space that beauty blooms; only in space are events, and objects and people unique and significant and therefore beautiful.

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

People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that -- just dump it down on top of you, a useless strong-scented burden.

One can get just as much exultation in losing oneself in a little thing as in a big thing. It is nice to think how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy.

When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. Only when one is connected to one's own core is.