Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads Of her life, and weaves them gratefully Into a single cloth – It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall And clears it for a different celebration.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Do not despair if the answers don't come immediately. Some answers are only revealed with the passage of time.

A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development.

May I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.... How we waste our afflictions!... [T]hey're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year—; not only a season—: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.

Why don't you conceive of God as an ally who is coming, who has been approaching since time began, the one who will someday arrive, the fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? Why not project his birth into the future, and live your life as an excruciating and lyrical moment in the history of a prodigious pregnancy?

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?