God often used bitter experiences to make us better. Gold can be a helpful servant, but a cruel master.

God may want you to be the answer to your own prayer.

This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy - even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence? It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life.

Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.