Elizabeth Bowen

That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.

It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights. --from The Death of the Heart (1938)

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

Art is the only thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.