In the sheltered simplicity of the first days after a baby is born, one sees again the magical closed circle, the miraculous sense of two people existing only for each other.

I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.

Can you write a book and have children at the same time? Yes, if you're content to do it very very slowly.

We must relearn to be alone.

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

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.

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