1. "For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair."
2. “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.”
3. “Him that I love, I wish to be free - even from me.”
4. “I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.”
5. “It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.”
6. ”I understand why the saints were rarely married women. It has primarily to do with distractions . . . Woman's normal occupations run counter to creative life, or contemplative life or saintly life.”
7. “Love is a force in you that enables you to give other things... It is a power like money, or steam, or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it.”
8. ”One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.”
9. “Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish.”
10. ”Only when a tree has fallen can you take a measure of it. It is the same with a man.”
11. "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."
12. ”The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.”
13. “The pure relationship, how beautiful it is!...For the first part of every relationship is pure, whether it be with friend of lover, husband or child. It is pure, simple and unencumbered. It is like the artist's vision before he has to discipline it into form, or like the flower of love before it has ripened to the firm but heavy fruit of responsibility. Every relationship seems simple at its start. The simplicity of first love, or friendliness, the mutuality of first sympathy seems, at its initial appearance -- even if merely in exciting conversation across a dinner table -- to be a self-enclosed world. Two people listening to each other, two shells meeting each other, making one world between them. There are no others in the perfect unity of that instant, no other people or things or interests. It is free of ties or claims, unburdened by responsibilities, by worry about the future or debts to the past.”
14. ”The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.”
15. ”Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.”
16. “We tend not to choose the unknown, which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.”
17. ”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.”
18. "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 some secret vice!"
