Woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.

I do not like talking casually to people - it does not interest me - and most of them are unwilling to talk at all seriously.

Woman must be the pioneer in this turning inward for strength. In a sense, she has always been the pioneer.

These bright roofs, these steep towers, these jewel-lakes, these skeins of railroad line - all spoke to her and she answered. She was glad they were there. She belonged to them and they to her.

In general, I feel, or I have come to feel, that the richest writing comes not from the people who dedicate themselves to writing alone. I know this is contradicted again and again but I continue to feel it. They don't, of course, write as much, or as fast, but I think it is riper and more satisfying when it does come. One of the difficulties of writing or doing any kind of creative work in America seems to me to be that we put such stress on production and material results. We put a time pressure and a mass pressure on creative work which are meaningless and infantile in that field.

Nothing feeds the center of being so much as creative work. The curtain of mechanization has come down between the mind and the hand.