black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

It’s the perpetually unfinished quality of housework that makes it oppressive – it never ends, like bad psychoanalysis, or a dream interrupted. It is paradoxically true that it is exactly this daily re-creation of the world that lends housekeeping its nobility and romance.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Children hold us hostage; they represent our commitment to the future.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Children Commitment Hostage
I love cloisters, which are the architectural equivalent of a theological concept: perfect freedom within set boundaries.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Architecture Boundaries Perfect
to have a crisis, and act upon it, is one thing. To dwell in perpetual crisis is another.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Crisis Stress Trouble
Italy offers one the most priceless of all one’s possessions – one’s own soul.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Possession Priceless Soul
All our loves are contained in all our other loves.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Contain Love Other
I love medieval cities; they do not clamor for attention; they possess their souls – their riches – in quiet; formal, courteous, they reveal themselves slowly, stone by stone, garden by garden; hidden treasures wait calmly to be loved and yield to introspective wandering.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Cities Garden Travel
To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Anarchy Fun Serious Work
Nothing is more democratic, less judgmental, than water. Water doesn’t care whether flesh is withered or fresh; it caresses aged flesh and firm flesh with equal love.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Care Sports Water
Weather creates character.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Character Create Weather
All is waiting and all is work; all is change and all is permanence.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Change Permanence Waiting Work
To sleep is an act of faith.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Act Faith Sleep
One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Rome Tired Wish
Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself is a form of prayer. . .
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Prayer Sometimes Thinking
Great unhappiness is incompatible with the belief that it will ever end.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Belief Grief Unhappiness
To offer the complexities of life as an excuse for not addressing oneself to the simpler, more manageable (trivial) aspects of daily existence is a perversity often indulged in by artists, husbands, intellectuals — and critics of the Women’s Movement.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Artist Husband Movement
truth … is the first casualty of tyranny.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON

Casualties First Truth