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

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

Can one make the future a substitute for the present? And what guarantee have we that the future will be any better if we neglect the present?

... once you get beyond the crust of the first pang it is all the same and you can easily bear it. It is just the transition from painlessness to pain that is so terrible.

Why is it that you can sometimes feel the reality of people more keenly through a letter than face to face?

Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before.

To be deeply in love is, of course, a great liberating force.