I had the feeling . . . that my experience was very different from other people’s. (Are we all under this illusion?)

Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.

Failures aren't failures if you learn something from them.

My diaries were written primarily, I think, not to preserve the experience but to savor it, to make it even more real, more visible and palpable, than in actual life. For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

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?

We walk up the beach under the stars. And when we are tired of walking, we lie flat on the sand under a bowl of stars. We feel stretched, expanded to take in their compass. They pour into us until we are filled with stars, up to the brim.

If it is a woman's function to give, she must be replenished, too.