If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.

Inside my mother's death / I lay and could not breathe.

We only keep what we lose.

For to be desperate is to discover strength. / We die of comfort and by conflict live.

Gardening is the instrument of grace.

How slowly one comes to understand anything!

I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.