“So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.”

I want nothing from love, in short, but love.

If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.

I went to collect the few personal belongings which. I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.

Writing only leads to more writing.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.

At sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans.

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.

If he’s getting married, he’s not longer interesting.

I’ve entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles.

I have found my voice again and the art of using it.

We only do well the things we like doing.

A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

There is no limit to what the Lord can do in and with and through any individual or any married couple who surrender themselves and their resources completely to His will and His way.

As we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not.

God inclines to shower His graces upon us, but our perverted will is a barrier to His generosity.

If anyone asks you for something that you believe would be injurious to him, refuse, but in such a manner as not to lose his good-will.

More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.

Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervours, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills.

He does not call those who are worthy, but those whom He wills.