Melanie Biehle

“Now, instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space with continuous music, chatter and companionship to which we do not even listen. It is simply there to fill the vacuum. When the noise stops there is no inner music to take its place. We must re-learn to be alone.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition

“To ask how little, not how much, can I get along with. To say—is it necessary?—when I am tempted to add one more accumulation to my life, when I am pulled toward one more centrifugal activity.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition

“How wonderful are islands! Islands in space, like this one I have come to, ringed about by miles of water, linked by no bridges, no cables, no telephones. An island from the world and the world's life. Islands in time, like this short vacation of mine. The past and the future are cut off; only the present remains. Existence in the present gives island living an extreme vividness and purity. One lives like a child or a saint in the immediacy of here and now. Every day, every act, is an island, washed by time and space, and has an island's completion. People, too, become like islands in such an atmosphere, self-contained, whole, serene; respecting other people's solitude, not intruding on their shores, standing back in reverence before the miracle of another individual.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“What release to write so that one forgets oneself, forgets one's companion, forgets where one is or what one is going to do next--to be drenched in work as one is drenched in sleep or the sea.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea