“What an extraordinary satisfaction there is in cleaning things! (Does the satisfaction depend on ownership? I suspect so.”

How huge it is, how empty, this great space for which I have been longing all my life. Still no letters.

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.

Let us not waste love, it is rare enough.

I think being a woman is like being Irish, Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the time.

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.

I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.

I just enjoy translating, it’s like opening one’s mouth and hearing someone else’s voice emerge.

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.

Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.

Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. This is why all the world is a stage.

Youth is a marvelous garment.

The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.

Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.

My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings.

Seize the day. Make your life extraordinary.

The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you’ve struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.

Why live an ordinary life, when you can live an extraordinary one.

I believe Success is achieved by ordinary people with extraordinary determination.

One skill you want to master in this day and age we live in, if you want to have an extraordinary life, is the ability to learn rapidly.