To mistake ugliness for reality is one of the frauds of the realistic school [of writing]. A hunger for the unknown and an aspiration toward beauty were inseparable from civilization. In America the word art was distorted to mean artificial.

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.

I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them.

One discovers that destiny can be diverted, that one does not have to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities. Once the deforming mirror has been smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness. There is a possibility of joy.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we ... believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

Nowhere is inhumanity more revealed than in hospitals.