“...Unaccustomed sense of peace did not depend on...'the whim of any fallible creature, or...economic security, or the weather. I don't know where it comes from. Jung states that such serenity is always a miracle...I am so glad that the therapists of my maturity and the saints of my childhood agree on one thing.”

“I love weather. I'm a connoisseur of weather. Wherever my travels take me, the first thing I do is turn on the weather channel and see what's going on, what's coming. I like to know about regional weather patterns, how storms are created in different altitudes, what kinds of clouds are forming or dissipating or blowing through, where the winds are coming from, where they've been. That's not a passion everybody shares, I know, but I don't believe there are any people on earth who, properly sheltered, don't feel the peace inside a summer rain and the cleansing it brings, the renewal of the earth in its aftermath.”

“Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgement, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility. ”

“You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don't blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself. I never did harm any man since I was born in the world. My voice is always for peace.”

“My biggest anxiety about becoming a therapist is feeling that I am inadequate. My instructors reassure me that this is a normal feeling, that many therapists experience this in their first year or two of training, and that we’re not expected to be perfect. But it doesn’t make any difference—it remains my biggest anxiety. I believe it’s because I was always second best in my family of origin. No matter what I did, my sister was always smarter...more creative. I learned to feel really uncomfortable whenever I wasn’t in complete command and didn’t know just exactly what I was supposed to do. So, even though some part of me knows that I’m really not inadequate, it still churns my stomach when I am not good at something right away.”

“I suppose the Valley of the Na, in Always Coming Home, is where I think I'd most like to live; but that's partly because I did live there, all the summers of my childhood.”