Is it perhaps the one necessity of love, that it be needed? And the one great human tragedy that it so rarely is?

The body is a universe in itself and must be held as sacred as anything in creation....It is dangerous to forget the body as sacramental.

For after all we make our faces as we go along.

There were moments ... when it seemed that all one could be asked was just to keep the ashtrays clean, the bed made, the wastebaskets emptied, as if one never got to the real things because of the constant exhausting battle to keep ordinary life from falling apart.

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.

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

Absence becomes the greatest Presence.