Invitations to speak upon public occasions are among my most grievous embarrassments. Why is it inferred that one is or can be a public speaker because she has written a book? Writing is a very private business. I do not know any other occupation which requires so much privacy unless it is a life of prayer or a life of crime.

sanity, in my opinion, is an achievement. I have seen very few well-balanced people in my life who were not dunces.

war is a ferocious form of insanity. Nothing can justify it.

The bravest thing you can do when you are not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly.

I love truth, although I shall die hating mere facts, because they are misleading.

Maybe I shall never achieve happiness, but one thing I have had - the terrible wisdom of love.

There is something in the quality of the French mind to which I have always felt a reluctant kinship. They are the only people I know who can leap into an enormous vocabulary of words and beat them up with the wings of their spirit into a fine hysterical eloquence.