A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.

Although she had resisted this knowledge all her life, had lived determinedly in the future focused there by ambition, she understood at last that this was the real condition of humanity: The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simmple, sel-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future.

There’s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It’s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it’s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don’t see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren’t there.

What has been is no more. Change has come.

I can do what I need to do. I can get where I want to go, no matter how hard it is.

The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness.

While I like people, I do also like being alone in a room and seeing what you can do with a particular theme or subject.