I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.
It led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure.
True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not only to get out – you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I’m very glad therefore you’ve been a part of it.
I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say – feel for all you’re worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.
There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.
