jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.

There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

I can’t let you go now. I want to go places with you; obscure little places, just to be able to say: here I came with her.

I adore the struggle you carry in yourself. I adore your terrifying sincerity.

This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.

One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life, and that leap is the most difficult to make - to part with one's faith, one's love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.

although I love a rich life, I hate an overcrowded life. I believe in rumination and lose half the beauty of all things when I am deprived of the time to ruminate.