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 be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.

For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well

Perhaps both men and women in America may hunger, in our material, outward, active, masculine culture, for the supposedly feminine qualities of heart, mind and spirit — qualities which are actually neither masculine nor feminine, but simply human qualities that have been neglected.

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.

The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize. In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty.

I think best with a pencil in my hand.

We insist on permanency, on continuity, when the only continuity possible is in growth, in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass but partners in the same pattern. The only real security in a relationship lies neither in looking back in nostalgia, nor forward with dread or anticipation, but living in the present and accepting the relationship as it is now.