Hardening of the hearteries is the most serious affliction besetting marriage, and warm, good-humored, approving words are the only effective preventive.

You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self.

It is possible to ruin a chicken in the cooking of it, but not easily. Short of burning it or letting it get dried out, you can hardly go wrong.

It is one of those quirks of human nature that you love the person whom you treat well, not necessarily the person who treats you well.

Men fear being used; women fear being used up.

To live with the terrible truths about ourselves is the only way of not living them out. A need denied has infinitely more power than a need accepted.

There is no way of steering successfully between a failed situation and a failed self except by stopping and taking our bearings.