I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.

Love cannot exorcise the gifts of hate. / Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight, / But laughter we can never over-rate.

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. . . .

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

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

Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

Most people have to talk so they won't hear.