The Summer Book is beautiful and warm, with the kind of wisdom we can adapt to our everyday lives.

it is only in statistics that people die by the millions. Each person dies individually, in his own predicament.

Soon I will be an old, white-haired lady, into whose lap someone places a baby, saying, "Smile, Grandma!" - I, who myself so recently was photographed on my grandmother's lap.

We are different. We are equal in every way but our voices are important to each other and our need to want to listen to each other and try to understand, because sometimes we are so difficult to understand. Men to understand us, and we to understand men. And we don't. We don't connect the way we should.

One of the things I like about my profession, and that I find healthy, is that one constantly has to break oneself to pieces.

I just think that sometimes it is less hard to wake up feeling lonely when you are alone than to wake up feeling lonely when you are with someone else. Some people would be better off alone, but they feel they've got to get hold of someone to prove they're worthwhile.

What I have always loved most in men is imperfection. I get moved by the wrinkles on the throat of a man. It makes me love him more. I think it is sad that more women don't take the chance that maybe men will be moved by seeing the chin a little less firm than it used to be, that a man will be more in love with his wife because he remembers who she was and sees who she is and thinks, God, isn't that lovely that this happened to her. And be moved by life telling its story there.