Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.”

“Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

“The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness.”

“To be deeply in love is, of course, a great liberating force.”

“I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.”

“Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.”

“After all, I don't see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.”

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.”

“The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.”

“Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before.”

“It is the wilderness inthe mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is astranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then onecannot touch others.”

“And so I miss the fertilization that might come from a contact. And for me--yes, I think I might as well admit it--fertilization does come a great deal from contacts. Why then do I avoid them--in a sort of false pride--shyness--timorous modesty? I used to be afraid of falling in love with people--or having them think I was--that I was chasing them (how ridiculous--I am actually always running away!) but now surely--I should be mature enough to be over that. I am no longer afraid of falling in love, and the other false modesties should vanish. I cannot bear to think "par delicatesse j'ai perdu ma vie." (Because of discretion I have lost my life).”

“You can’t just write and write and put things in a drawer. They wither without the warm sun of someone else’s appreciation.”

“The beach is not a place to work; to read, write or to think.”

“...I want first of all - in fact, as an end to these other desires - to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central cor to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact - to borrow from the language of the saints -to live 'in grace' as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony...”

“Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distraction...What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive.”

“I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light.”

“To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.”

“America, which has the most glorious present still existing in the world today, hardly stops to enjoy it, in her insatiable appetite for the future.”

“The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.”