Miracles cannot be explained, that is their miraculous nature.

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. . . .

About loving, I have little to learn from the young.

If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the Métro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.

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

In the garden the door is always open into the "holy" - growth, birth, death. Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle, and in the garden we are never far away from death, the fertilizing, good, creative death.

I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.