I was so obsessed and consumed with my grievances that I could not get away from myself and think things out in the light. I was in the grip of that blinding, destructive, terrible thing -- righteous indignation.

If I had never met him I would have dreamed him into being.

Woe is me! Bitter is me! For what is my life? Why didn't the ship go under and drown me before I came to America?

This fire in me, it's not just the hunger of a woman for a man - it's the hunger of all my people back of me, from all ages, for light, for the life higher!

The real thing creates its own poetry.

Though my father was poor and had nothing, the Torah, the poetry of prophets, was his daily bread.

Poor people who had escaped from poverty as I had, feared it, hated it and fled from it all their lives. Those born rich could afford to be touched by it.