“When will I ever learn to accept what is given instead of always yearning for more? My lavish expectations too often tarnish my blessings.”

“Like my grandmother always said, 'you never know the blessings that come from suffering.”

“Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

“There is a moment when the body is about to cease its natural functions, when it is important to accept that death is happening and to begin to let go, emotionally, physically and spiritually. I have learned the signs when something is preventing this from happening. Perhaps the family or friends cannot accept that the loved one is dying. Perhaps there are some things the dying person has not reconciled - inside herself or with other people. Often there is fear of the physical act of dying.”

“I had expected the well to be full for some reason.Not that it had ever been before.I kept looking for signs of water in the dark insides.I heard my bucket clank as it hitAgainst the walls that held nothing.I look at the bucket that came up emptyAnd made a decision that changed my life.I will keep my bucket and find another well.”

“The use of reading, Gibbon says somewhere, is to aid us in thinking. I have always disagreed with Gibbon over that; he may have used literature to help him think, but for me, often, and for most of the human race I reckon (since I have no reason to think myself unique) books can be a mind-stupefying drug, employed to banish thought, not to invoke it. When I am unhappy I can sink into a novel as into unconsciousness. Blessed War and Peace, thrice blessed Mansfield Park; how many potential suicides have their pages distracted and soothed and entertained past the danger point?”

“This is the difficulty with learning a language: not always knowing if words contain more than they say.”