To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times — The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, activist; First Lady of the US (1933–45)

Memoir (1961), The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, Preface
    (Source)

This is reworked from the concluding chapter of her earlier memoir (1937), This Is My Story, ch. 23 "The End of a Period," with the first and second sentences separated there by a couple of pages discussing various aunts and uncles.