Fame is a kind of death because it arrests life around the person in the public eye. If one is recognized everywhere, one begins to feel like Medusa. People stop their normal life and actions and freeze into staring manikins. "We can never catch people or life unawares," as I wrote to my mother, in an outburst of frustration. "It is always looking at us."

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

God often used bitter experiences to make us better. Gold can be a helpful servant, but a cruel master.

One must lose one's life to find it.

People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that -- just dump it down on top of you, a useless strong-scented burden.

The beach is not the place to work; to read, write or think.

If one talks to more than four people, it is an audience; and one cannot really think or exchange thoughts with an audience.