Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day - like writing a poem or saying a prayer.
Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.
Duration is not a test of truth or falsehood.
For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.
For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.
Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.
I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.
If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.
It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.
Life is a gift, given in trust - like a child.
My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen --- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery --- just stark me.
One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.
The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness.
The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.
The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.
To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.
When the wedding march sounds the resolute approach, the clock no longer ticks, it tolls the hour…. The figures in the aisle are no longer individuals, they symbolize the human race.