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 give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.

For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse.

How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange.