“Woman’s life today is tending more and more toward the state William James describes so well in the German word, ‘Zerrissenheit: torn-to-pieces-hood.’ She cannot live perpetually in ‘Zerrissenheit.’ She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today…. Solitude, says the moon shell. Center-down, say the Quaker saints. To the possession of the self the way is inward, says Plotinus. The cell of self-knowledge is the stall in which the pilgrim must be reborn, says St. Catherine of Siena.”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh,
Gift from the Sea, 1955
“Words were central to her life for as long as I have known her, and yet she appears perfectly comfortable without them. She does not miss them. I on the other hand, am at a loss. I am bewildered, confused, absolutely at sea, in my mother’s silence.”