Communication with another person -- wasn't it the realest thing in life?

For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.

For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence? It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life.

there is no sin punished more implacably by nature than the sin of resistance to change.

We insist on permanency, on continuity, when the only continuity possible is in growth, in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass but partners in the same pattern. The only real security in a relationship lies neither in looking back in nostalgia, nor forward with dread or anticipation, but living in the present and accepting the relationship as it is now.

Communication with another person -- wasn't it the realest thing in life?

... 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.