When we admit our vulnerability, we include others. If we deny it, we shut them out.

I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines. I write too many letters and too few poems.

Self-respect is nothing to hide behind. When you need it most it isn't there.

Women are at last becoming persons first and wives second, and that is as it should be.

Being very rich as far as I am concerned is having a margin. The margin is being able to give.

The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seed every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree's way of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind.