The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

How happy is the Optimist / To whom life shows its sunny side / His horse may lose, his ship may list, / But he always sees the funny side.

The Enemy, who wears her mother's usual face and confidential tone, has access; doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone.

If childhood is still a state, it is now chiefly a state of confusion.

Scratch any father, you find / Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, / Believing change is a threat.

Seventy is wormwood, Seventy is gall But its better to be seventy, Than not alive at all.