If one talks to more than four people, it is an audience; and one cannot really think or exchange thoughts with an audience.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery-just stark me.

When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.

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.

I choose not to waste my energy hating someone and I recognise that their negativity drags me down, so I walk away from them.

Envy and fear are the only passions to which no pleasure is attached.

We roared. We were one big animal throat, roaring.

Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it.

I go out as a missionary not that I may follow the dictates of common sense, but that I may obey that command of Christ.

Life (and running) is not all about time but about our experiences along the way.

Knowledge isn’t love

When everybody else thinks it's the end, we have to begin.

Some people say, "If you trust in God's unconditional love, why do you need to pray?" A better ending is "why wouldn't you want to?"

A duel is just two murders who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.