I love medieval cities; they do not clamor for attention; they possess their souls - their riches - in quiet; formal, courteous, they reveal themselves slowly, stone by stone, garden by garden; hidden treasures wait calmly to be loved and yield to introspective wandering.

Nothing is more democratic, less judgmental, than water. Water doesn't care whether flesh is withered or fresh; it caresses aged flesh and firm flesh with equal love.

There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.

the gardens of our childhood are all beautiful.

Grief does not end and love does not die and nothing fills its graven place. With grace, pain is transmuted into the gold of wisdom and compassion and the lesser coin of muted sadness and resignation; but something leaden of it remains, to become the kernel arond which more pain accretes (a black pearl): one pain becomes every other pain ... unless one strips away, one by one, the layers of pain to get to the heart of the pain - and this causes more pain, pain so intense as to feel like evisceration.

I made the mistake of thinking that if you add up the past, you sum up the future; I forgot how frequently life astonishes us.

Desire creates its own object.