“But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes.”

Love is affirmation; it motivates the yes responses and the sense of wider communication. Love casts out fear, and in the security of this togetherness we find contentment, courage.

The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.

And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle – the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start?

All we can do is go around telling the truth.

The value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

I see a green tree. And to me it is green. And you would call the tree green also. And we would agree on this. But is the colour you see as green the same colour I see as green?

I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.

It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right.

The curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many.

Sometimes this fellow’s music was like little colored pieces of crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing she had ever imagined about.

The memories of childhood have a strange shuttling quality, and areas of darkness ring the spaces of light.

When a person knows and can’t make the others understand, what does he do?

Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons–throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.

The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.

The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.

A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp.

Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask.

The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body’s total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form?

The bird building her home on your windowsill has every nest destroyed before. The spider that is delicately weaving a masterpiece has had every single thread broken before. And despite it all, they try again.

An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love”- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

An honorable human relationship … is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

She leads us through their unknown world, her gift of language rising up like a delicate string of necessary lights.

To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.