The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men's theories of women, as they alwayshave done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it's because she doesn't quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man's picture of woman to live up to.

I cannot get any sense of an enemy - only of a disaster.

I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.

It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral.

I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human race, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family.

For, of course, being a girl, one’s whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a perfect, a pure and noble freedom. What else did a girl’s life mean?

Only in a novel are all things given full play.