If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.

Letters are the real curse of my existence. I hate to write them: I have to. If I don't, there they are - the great guilty gates barring my way.

Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun.

Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.

there does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing.