I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.

Read widely of others' experiences, even if it'd be more comfortable to snuggle back in the comforting cotton-wool of blissful ignorance.

…* to learn that money makes life smooth in some ways, and to feel how tight and threadbare life is if you have too little. * to despise money, which is a farce, mere paper, and to hate what you have to do for it, and yet to long to have it in order to be free from slaving for it. * to yearn toward art, music, ballet and good books, and get them only in tantalizing snatches.

Love life day by day, color by color, touch by touch.

The claw of the magnolia, drunk on its own scents, asks nothing of life.

The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of stories, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.

I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still