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.

The best marriages, like the best lives, were both happy and unhappy. There was even a kind of necessary tension, a certain tautness between the partners that gave the marriage strength, like the tautness of a full sail. You went forward on it.

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

And one perfect day can give clues for a more perfect life.

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.

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.

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