It's a very American trait, this wanting people to think well of us. It's a young want, and I am ashamed of it in myself. I am not always a good daughter, even though my lacks are in areas different from her complaints. Haven't I learned yet that the desire to be perfect is always disastrous and, at the least, loses me in the mire of false guilt?

There is in God, some say, a deep but dazzling darkness.

Euripedes. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.

life is the greatest gift that could ever be conceived ... A daffodil pushing up through the dark earth to the spring, knowing somehow deep in its roots that spring and light and sunshine will come, has more courage and more knowledge of the value of life than any human being I've met.

A new year can begin only because the old year ends.

We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.