The beach is not the place to work; to read, write or think.

I had the feeling . . . that my experience was very different from other people’s. (Are we all under this illusion?)

there is no aristocracy of grief. Grief is a great leveler.

Perhaps both men and women in America may hunger, in our material, outward, active, masculine culture, for the supposedly feminine qualities of heart, mind and spirit — qualities which are actually neither masculine nor feminine, but simply human qualities that have been neglected.

... the most ordinary everyday living is as delicate, as breath-taking, as difficult, takes as terrific physical and mental control and effort, as walking a tightrope.

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.

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.