Is there anything as horrible as starting on a trip? Once you're off, that's all right, but the last moments are earthquake and convulsion, and the feeling that you are a snail being pulled off your rock.

You can’t just write and write and put things in a drawer. They wither without the warm sun of someone else’s appreciation.

We are always bargaining with our feelings so that we can live from day to day.

The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it! We're up, above you. We were dependant on you just now, prisoners fawning on you for favors, for wind and light. But now, we are free. We are up! We are off! Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring- a sustained note of power and joy.

Why do progress and beauty have to be so opposed?

It is a difficult lesson to learn today-to leave one's friends and family and deliberately practice the art of solitude for an hour or a day or a week. And yet, once it is done, I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.

Ideally, both members of a couple in love free each other to new and different worlds.