If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

I am a hoarder of two things: documents and trusted friends.

So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to silence.

I'm old-fashioned beyond my years.

it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.

I wouldn't take the Pope too seriously. He's a Pole first, a pope second, and maybe a Christian third.

It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.