to know perfect happiness a woman may be a mother, but must be a grandmother.

Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.

The sun is still there... even if clouds drift over it. Once you have experienced the reality of sunshine you may weep, but you will never feel ice about your heart again.

She long ago accepted the fact that happiness is like, swallows in spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it.

All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.

In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.

The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.

Happy the man who lives long enough to acknowledge his ignorance

Not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.

He grinned at her, and she grinned at him, and it seemed to Maria that suddenly the sun came out.

Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul, a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.

If we deny the thirst of love, we stand to lose the last known address of the stranger whithin us.

Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving.

I don't need to relive my fears anymore. All I need to do now is try to overcome them.

They really cut to the chase in the urologist’s examination room, and I tried to laugh. If this office were a movie, it would have been rated R.

Many women do not recognize themselves as discriminated against no better proof could be found of the totality of their conditioning.

I'd like to go away for six months and learn to kiteboard and windsurf. I love pinochle, I love chess and I love windsurfing.

Looking back at it now, I really feel like it was a gift because I don’t know if I have the talent to become a prima ballerina. It’s such a hard job to have. I don’t have any regrets about it.

Everything is a reenactment. We are reenacting the world in the mind. The world is not inside there. It does not reside in the gray matter of the brain.

Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.

The most efficient way to memorise a piece is to use the one which proceeds in an error free manner