Difference of opinion has never been sufficiently appreciated. It is the unexpected the unknowable the divine irrationality of life that saves us.
Anger must be the energy that has not yet found its fight channel.
Another secret we carry is that though drab outside - wreckage to the eye mirrors a mortification - inside we flame with a wild life that is almost incommunicable.
Life does not accommodate you it shatters you. It is meant to and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.
life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by laws we only half understand we find that the lesson we learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness.
No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
I grow more intense as I age.
love at any age takes everything you've got.
Admiration is one of the chief delights of living.
I feel most real when alone even most alive when alone. Better to say that the liveliness of companionship and the liveliness of solitude differ and the latter is never as exhausting as the former.
Is life a pregnancy? That would make death a birth.
My kitchen linoleum is so black and shiny that I waltz while I wait for the kettle to boil. This pleasure is for the old who live alone.
Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove but it can be as destructive as a lion.
Difficulties are what makes it honorable and interesting to be alive.
The crucial task of old age is balance: keeping just well enough just brave enough just gay and interested and starkly honest enough to remain a sentient human being.
Claim the events of your life! When you posses all you have been and done you are fierce with reality.
Order cleanliness seemliness make a structure that is half support half ritual and - if it does not create it - maintains decency.
Life does not acommodate you it shatters you. It is meant to and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.
We must find out for ourselves otherwise it wouldn't be discovery.
I wonder if living alone makes one more alive. No precious energy goes in disagreement or compromise. No need to augment others there is just yourself just truth - a morsel - and you.
We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience almost beyond our capacity at times but something to be carried high.
Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.
In very truth the days are almost free and if it is another way of saying that our lives are empty well -- there are days when emptiness is spacious and non-existence elevating . . .
Is there any stab as deep as wondering where and how much you failed those you loved.
To know another and to be known by another--that is everything.