Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

restraint equals indulgence

Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.

It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.

A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.

...nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.

The bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business...I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.