Guests can be, and often are, delightful, but they should never be allowed to get the upper hand.

What a blessing it is to love books.

What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.

Well, I for one am unable to imagine how anybody who lives with an intelligent and devoted dog can every be lonely.

There's no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk -to believe, and to risk everything for your belief.

Love isn't decent. Love is glorious and shameless.

And the summer seems as though it would dream on for ever.

I would recommend to those persons who are inclined to stagnate, whose blood is beginning to thicken sluggishly in their veins, to try keeping four dogs, two of which are puppies.

Home is the best place when life begins to wobble.

The longer I live the greater is my respect for manure in all its forms.

... Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.

Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?

I was so ready to become a mom. Actually, I was ready secondarily to become a mom. I was so ready to have the intimacy and commitment of marriage.

God lies ahead. I convince myself and constantly repeat to myself that: He depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

You know, there's something heartsick about parties like this. Look at us. We're all pretending to be smart, as if intelligence were the cure for our anguish.

I had set the standard for my style of relief pitching so high that when I came back to the rest of the pack, everybody said I was done.

Teaching which ignores the realities of children will be rejected as surely as any graft which attempts to ignore the body's immune system.

I've had my bubblegum years and I did them well. Now it's time to come back as the woman, artist, and musician that I am without apologizing.

Good words shall gain you honor in the marketplace, but good deeds shall gain you friends among men.

As long as you can change paint, you don't change. For you to change - for paint to do something to you - paint must stay constant.

The last thing, and the only one that you cannot physically train for, is the psychological preparation