Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being.

Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.

The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. Though you may say the “I do” of the wedding ritual in all sincerity, it is the testing of that vow over time that makes you married.

When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening. . . . I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.

It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?

Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.