There can be no summary and dramatic end to a marriage - only a slow and painful unravelling of a tangled skein of threads too stubborn to be broken.

Fortunately for the human race, pain, however piercing, is not a lasting emotion. The recollection of happiness lingers, but the consciousness never retains for long the first thrust of tragic loss. The details of daily life crowd in upon the mind.

I was a long time learning that wisdom and experience are things apart; that to taste life is not to be confused with understanding what life is really all about.

There is a peacefulness, an air of reflection, about a rocking-chair that attaches to no other moving object.

You can never be too rich or too thin.

A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience.

All this was mine; but I was a long time learning that wisdom and experience are things apart; that to taste life is not to be confused with understanding what life is really all about. The shared experiences, the wisdom so freely proffered by others, in words and in example, rarely swayed me for long. Came another day and the import was gone, and only the echo of the laughter remained. Experience was a revolving sun in the warmth of which I was content to bask.