One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.

A dance to the music of time.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.