I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. It is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional. I make fun of its knobbiness. Sometimes I resent its burdens and excrescences. But its tireless adaptability and tenacity draw my astonished admiration and sometimes even my tears. And it is comfortable in its familiarity, its homeliness, like old garden gloves when have molded themselves perfectly to the shape of the hand. I do not like to put it down. I will not want to leave it.

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

Certain environments, certain modes of life, and certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification is one of them.

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

Yesterday's fairy tale is today's fact. The magician is only one step ahead of his audience.

To mention a loved object, a person, or a place to someone else is to invest that object with reality.

We tend not to choose the unknown, which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. An yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.