“Men sometimes come and question meHow many years my age may be,Seeing my temples silver nowAnd flecks of snow upon my brow.This is the answer that I give"When I count up the life I liveApplying all my reason's power,I make the total just one hour.""And how", my questioner repliesIn accents of amazed surprise,"Mak'st thou this sum, which seems to meBeyond all credibility?""One day", I answer," she I loveAll other earthly things aboveLay in my arms, and like a thoughtHer lips with mine I swiftly sought."And though the years before I dieStretch out interminably, IShall only count my life in truthAs that brief hour of happy youth." -”

“The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept?”

“The question of how to spend my life, of what my life is for, is a question posed only to me, and I can no more delegate the responsibility for answering it than I can delegate the task of dying.”

“Answers I kept my answers small and kept them near;Big questions bruised my mind but still I letSmall answers be a bullwark to my fear.The huge abstractions I kept from the light;Small things I handled and caressed and loved.I let the stars assume the whole of night.But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacityShouted to be acknowledged and believed.Even when all small answers build up toProtection of my spirit, still I hearBig answers striving for their overthrow.And all the great conclusions coming near”

“I, myself, write to change my life, to make it come out the way I want it to. But other people write for other reasons: to see more closely what it is they are thinking about, what they may be afraid of. Sometimes writers write to solve a problem, to answer their own question. All these reasons are good reasons. And that is the most important thing I'll ever tell you. Maybe it is the most important thing you'll ever hear. Ever.”

“Do you know what I would answer to someone who asked me for a description of myself, in a hurry? This:?? !!For indeed my life is a perpetual question mark--my thirst for books, my observations of people, all tend to satisfy a great, overwhelming desire to know, to understand, to find an answer to a million questions. And gradually the answers are revealed, many things are explained, and above all, many things are given names and described, and my restlessness is subdued. Then I become an exclamatory person, clapping my hands to the immense surprises the world holds for me, and falling from one ecstasy into another. I have the habit of peeping and prying and listening and seeking--passionate curiosity and expectation. But I have also the habit of being surprised, the habit of being filled with wonder and satisfaction each time I stumble on some wondrous thing. The first habit could make me a philosopher or a cynic or perhaps a humorist. But the other habit destroys all the delicate foundations, and I find each day that I am still...only a Woman!”