The price of being oneself is so high and involves so much ruthlessness toward others (or what looks like ruthlessness in our duty-bound culture) that very few people can afford it.

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

instant intimacy was too often followed by disillusion.

There the door is always open into the “holy” — growth, birth, death.

It is always hard to hear the buried truth from another person.

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

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. . . .