Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.
What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it – like a secret vice!
It isn’t for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for that long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.
For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.
Only when one is connected to one’s inner core is one connected to others. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be re-found through solitude.
People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that – just dump it down on top of you, a useless strong-scented burden.
Packing is chiefly planning – if it is.
These bright roofs, these steep towers, these jewel-lakes, these skeins of railroad line – all spoke to her and she answered. She was glad they were there. She belonged to them and they to her.
Communication with another person – wasn’t it the realest thing in life?
We walk up the beach under the stars. And when we are tired of walking, we lie flat on the sand under a bowl of stars. We feel stretched, expanded to take in their compass. They pour into us until we are filled with stars, up to the brim.
People don’t want to be understood – I mean not completely. It’s too destructive. Then they haven’t anything left. They don’t want complete sympathy or complete understanding. They want to be treated carelessly and taken for granted lots of times.
Yesterday I sat in a field of violets for a long time perfectly still, until I really sank into it – into the rhythm of the place, I mean – then when I got up to go home I couldn’t walk quickly or evenly because I was still in time with the field.
For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence? It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life.
The world has been forced to its knees. Unhappily, we seldom find our way there without being beaten to it by suffering.
Can you write a book and have children at the same time? Yes, if you’re content to do it very very slowly.
Too many people, too many demands, too much to do; competent, busy, hurrying people – It just isn’t living at all.
The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.
Purposeful giving is not as apt to deplete one’s resources; it belongs to that natural order of giving that seems to renew itself even in the act of depletion.
Cut asparagus at night – in desperation. When one is very tired one always does one more thing.
The present is passed over in the race for the future; the here is neglected in favor of the there. Enjoy the moment, even if it means merely a walk in the country.