Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.

Dreams are necessary to life.

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.

I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.

If all of us acted in unison as I act individually there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all.