January is my favorite month, when the light is plainest, least colored. And I like the feeling of beginnings.

Generosity is often the stalking horse of control.

The end of parenthood is implicit in its beginning: separation.

the capacity to work feeds on itself and has its own course of development. This is what artists have going for them.

The art of being officially old seems to lie in cooperative submission.

the knowledge of personal failure ... is the invaluable predicate of all honest compassion.

Our society is monstrously disjunctive, at once so efficient in war and so inefficient in caring for the welfare of its members. It is frightening to see people rooting in garbage pails on streets, living in cardboard crates under bridges, while their government wages war. Even when there is an emergency in a household, decent parents do not forget to feed the children.