Forgotten the strife; Now the need to kill Has died like fire, And the need to love Has replaced desire - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least in one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured. And there is another personal satisfaction: that of the people who like to recount their adventures, the diary-keepers, the story-tellers, the letter-writers, a strange race of people who feel half cheated of an experience unless it is retold. It does not really exist until it is put into words. As though a little doubting or dull, they could not see it until it is repeated. For, paradoxically enough, the more unreal an experience becomes - translated from real action into unreal words, dead symbols for life itself - the more vivid it grows. Not only does it seem more vivid, but its essential core becomes clearer. One says excitedly to an audience, 'Do you see - I can't tell you how strange it was - we all of us felt...' although actually, at the time of incident, one was not conscious of such a feeling, and only became so in the retelling. It is as inexplicable as looking all afternoon at a gray stone of a beach, and not realizing, until one tries to put it on canvas, that is in reality bright blue.

I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners
do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay
and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart’s. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern
and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place
here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now
arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back — it does not matter which. Because they know they
are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by
it.