When it comes to the important things one is always alone.

The hardest thing we are asked to do in this world is to remain aware of suffering, suffering about which we can do nothing.

Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets -- they're more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.

For of course one is never safe when in love. Growth is demanding and may seem dangerous, for there is loss as well as gain in growth. But why go on living if one has ceased to grow? And what more demanding atmosphere for growth than love in any form, than any relationship which can call out and requires of us our most secret and deepest selves?

How unnatural the imposed view, imposed by a puritanical ethos, that passionate love belongs only to the young, that people are dead from the neck down by the time they are forty, and that any deep feeling, any passion after that age, is either ludicrous or revolting!

Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.

What is there to do when people die - people so dear and rare - but bring them back by remembering?