To be sorry and glad together is to be perceptive to the richness of life.

All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.

Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food.

autumn days have a holiness that spring lacks ... They are like old serene saints for whom death has lost its terror.

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life.

...The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper.

to know perfect happiness a woman may be a mother, but must be a grandmother.