Splutter, splutter. Yes - we're off - we're rising. But why start off with an engine like that? But it smooths out now, like a long sigh, like a person breathing easily, freely. Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring - sustained note of power and joy. We turn from the lights of the city; we pivot on a dark wing; we roar over the earth. The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it!

Frenchwomen just never look ungroomed, do they?

The world has been forced to its knees. Unhappily, we seldom find our way there without being beaten to it by suffering.

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

How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.

For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well

I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. It is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional. I make fun of its knobbiness. Sometimes I resent its burdens and excrescences. But its tireless adaptability and tenacity draw my astonished admiration and sometimes even my tears. And it is comfortable in its familiarity, its homeliness, like old garden gloves when have molded themselves perfectly to the shape of the hand. I do not like to put it down. I will not want to leave it.