What I had that others didn't was a capacity for sticking to it.

There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.

We've got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints.

There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

If she had been left alone she would have gone on, in her own way, enjoying herself thoroughly, until people found one day that she had turned imperceptibly into one of those women who have become old without ever having been middle aged: a little withered, a little acid, hard as nails, sentimentally kindhearted, and addicted to religion or small dogs.