He dares not concern himself with the future for fear of disturbing the present.

So this is where the years of maturity deliver us - to this needy, selfish, unwieldy wish to be somebody else's first and primal other.

It's hard work being a person, you have to do it every single day.

The silence is perfect, and yet a torment.

A woman's life isn't worth a plateful of cabbage if she hasn't felt life stir under her heart. Taking a little one to nurse, watching him grow to manhood, that's what love is.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of available light and set to the movement of possible music