The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls - women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for that long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.

People talk about love as if it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers.

Marriage is tough, because it is woven of all these various elements, the weak and the strong. "In love-ness" is fragile for it is woven only with the gossamer threads of beauty. It seems to me absurd to talk about "happy" and "unhappy" marriages.

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.

Only when a tree has fallen can you take the measure of it. It is the same with a man.