Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

Frenchwomen just never look ungroomed, do they?

My diaries were written primarily, I think, not to preserve the experience but to savor it, to make it even more real, more visible and palpable, than in actual life. For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

If one talks to more than four people, it is an audience; and one cannot really think or exchange thoughts with an audience.

There comes a moment when the things one has written, even a traveler's memories, stand up and demand a justification. They require an explanation. They query, 'Who am I? What is my name? Why am I here?

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

When the heart is flooded with love there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation.