“Years have passed and how I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again.”

“After 50 years together as a couple:"Look how fast the leaves are falling now," Alan says. "The trees will be bare in a couple of days. Do you realize that we have watched the leaves fall together for more than fifty autumns?"I stand quietly, looking at Alan, letting his words sink in. I am suddenly so moved.”

“I am anxious. I am always anxious. I should change my name to Anxiety Dickinson. I am anxious about my little sister. My big sister. My mother. Myself. Life. I am anxious about what to wear, what to eat, what to say, how to breathe.”

“I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.”

“I am again in the present and awake. I close my eyes and am desperately trying to recapture the childhood memory. Now, however, I have to cross an abyss….”

“Was it the Twilight of Magic? Perhaps. But only today's. Magic could never die while the sun had the power to rise again and man had the wish to seek.”