Susan Vreeland

You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life.

Everybody works . . . . That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.

If two people love the same thing, she reasoned, then they must love each other, at least a little, even if they never say it."

He and I had a bridge that no one else traveled that made us artistic lovers, passionate without a touch of the flesh. He made me thrive, and valuing that, I could do nothing that would endanger it.

A hard choice. Water or books. Hmm. One could always have wine instead.

Things that have been lost and then found are doubly precious, don't you think. People too.

In the end, it's only the moments that we have.

Work is love made plain, whether man’s work or woman’s work.

He had a thought that amused him. "Figures, still life, landscape, AND an animal! Zola, eat your hat!" he bellowed.

It was strange: When you reduced even a fledgling love affair to its essentials--I loved her, she maybe loved me, I was foolish, I suffered--it became vacuous and trite, meaningless to anyone else. In the end, it's only the moments that we have, the kiss on the palm, the joint wonder at the furrowed texture of a fir trunk or at the infinitude of grains of sand in a dune. Only the moments.