Dawn's faint breath breathes with your mouth at the ends of empty streets. Gray light your eyes, sweet drops of dawn on dark hills. Your steps and breath like the wind of dawn smother houses. The city shudders, Stones exhale— you are life, an awakening. Star lost in the light of dawn, trill of the breeze, warmth, breath— the night is done. You are light and morning.

The only joy in the world is to begin.

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.