The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize. In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty.
If one talks to more than four people, it is an audience; and one cannot really think or exchange thoughts with an audience.
No new sect ever had humor; no disciples either, even the disciples of Christ.
Woman must be the pioneer in this turning inward for strength. In a sense, she has always been the pioneer.
Woman’s normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.
To me there is something completely and satisfyingly restful in that stretch of sea and sand, sea and sand and sky – complete peace, complete fulfillment.
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea...
We must relearn to be alone.
What a crippling art writing is, no body to it, no craft, really. It’s all in the mind and you never see it or feel it – only sometimes hear it. It uses only such a small part of man. I wish I were a sculptor.
We tend not to choose the unknown, which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. An yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.
Marriage is tough, because it is woven of all these various elements, the weak and the strong. “In love-ness” is fragile for it is woven only with the gossamer threads of beauty. It seems to me absurd to talk about “happy” and “unhappy” marriages.
God may want you to be the answer to your own prayer.
God often used bitter experiences to make us better. Gold can be a helpful servant, but a cruel master.
Marriage should, I think, always be a little bit hard and new and strange. It should be breaking your shell and going into another world, and a bigger one.
And one perfect day can give clues for a more perfect life.
The best marriages, like the best lives, were both happy and unhappy. There was even a kind of necessary tension, a certain tautness between the partners that gave the marriage strength, like the tautness of a full sail. You went forward on it.
I do not like talking casually to people – it does not interest me – and most of them are unwilling to talk at all seriously.
Failures aren’t failures if you learn something from them...
Fame separates you from life.
Fame is a kind of death because it arrests life around the person in the public eye.