There was such a thing as women's work and it consisted chiefly, Hilary sometimes thought, in being able to stand constant interruption and keep your temper. . . .

No partner in a love relationship... should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.

Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.

“How does one grow up?” I asked a friend the other day. There was a slight pause; then she answered, “By thinking.”

Unless the gentle inherit the earth, / There will be no earth.

Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.

It is curious how any making of order makes one feel mentally ordered, ordered inside.