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 slowly one comes to understand anything!

[In old age] there is a childlike innocence, often, that has nothing to do with the childishness of senility. The moments become precious . . .

I am realizing once and for all the difference as far as I am concerned of women and men and the necessity for both. With a man, however tender he is, one is feeding him - one is always and eternally understanding, mothering, supplying him with faith in himself (not in you).

When you change the way you look at a thing, the thing itself changes...By mastering feelings, she had come to understand the meaning of discipline and its reward: freedom and power.

It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.