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.

Eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim.

How hard it is to have the beautiful interdependence of marriage and yet be strong in oneself alone.

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.

There comes a moment when the things one has written, even a traveler's memories, stand up and demand a justification. They require an explanation. They query, 'Who am I? What is my name? Why am I here?

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

After all, I don't see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.