No wonder the tulip is the patron flower of Holland. Looking at it one almost smells fresh paint laid on in generous brilliance: doors, blinds, whole houses, canal boats, pails, farm wagons - all painted in greens, blues, reds, pinks, yellows.

When I dream, I am ageless.

Outwardly I am 83, but inwardly I am every age, with the emotions and experience of each period.

I say that almost everywhere there is beauty enough to fill a person's life if one would only be sensitive to it. but Henry says No: that broken beauty is only a torment, that one must have a whole beauty with man living in relation to it to have a rich civilization and art. . . . Is it because I am a woman that I accept what crumbs I may have, accept the hot-dog stands and amusement parks if I must, if the blue is bright beyond them and the sunset flushes the breasts of sea birds?

During much of my life, I was anxious to be what someone else wanted me to be. Now I have given up that struggle. I am what I am.

At a touch, he explodes like a snapdragon into loud purrs.

People don't feel so quarrelsome in warm weather. They get crotchety in the fall and begin to go to law about things after the first hard frosts.