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.

... once you get beyond the crust of the first pang it is all the same and you can easily bear it. It is just the transition from painlessness to pain that is so terrible.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.

Frenchwomen just never look ungroomed, do they?

One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much.

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.