I know why families were created with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed.

The unknown was my compass. The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unnamed was my science and progress.

When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.

Innocence was gone from all our acts. Our habitual state of rebellion became a serious political crime.

I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated

Not afraid of poverty and drabness and who is untouched by it, untouched by the drunkenness of her friends; (she) who judges, selects, discards people with severity, who knows, when she is telling her endless anecdotes, that they are ways of escape, keeping herself all the more secret behind that profuse talk.

Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then love will come to you, then it comes to you.