The nice thing about really intelligent people is that when you talk with them they make you feel intelligent too.

Woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

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

When you love someone you do not love them, all the time, in the exact same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships.

The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.

The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.