“The only way I can describe the extent of my anxiety is to say that I felt as if I were pregnant with a rock.”

“The longer I live, the more I observe that carrying around anger is the most debilitating to the person who bears it.”

“A mistake is simply another way of doing things. ”

“Some questions don't have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.”

“I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”

“Even as I learned to name the plants -- dogwood, five-fingered fern, mugwort -- I was stunned by the failure of language to reflect what I saw or felt.”

“The boldness and strength and happiness that were natural to me and to which I was denying their natural outlet refused to be denied and to be made sickly and fearful, and they poured through my veins then in an action of delight that was healthy and bold and strong. I forgot who or where I was and I made a sort of buzzing, humming noise like a top spinning or a bee. I felt a vibration like music all through me as if my blood were actually singing. And as though I were driven by that music which was formless yet felt as if it had the force of a dynamo. I crouched over my paper and held my pencil slavishly quick and intense, ready to serve this marvelous buzzing happiness at the moment when like surcharged atmosphere it should condense and form precious words that would drop onto my paper from the end of my pencil.”