The joy of a party is the newness of people to each other, renewed strikingness of humanity. They love each other, to distraction. Really to distraction. Before they fall into conversation and separate. ... The strangeness, and the hopes aroused by strangeness, are illusions. Mirages arising wherever people gather expectantly together.

Death must be got through as life had been, just somehow.

You think Christianity is favorable to women? On the contrary. It is the Christian countries that have produced the prostitute and the most vile estimations of women in the world.

Real speech can only come from complete silence. Incomplete silence is as fussy as deliberate conversation.

Women who are not living ought to spend all their time cracking jokes. In a rotten society women grow witty; making a heaven while they wait.

A happy childhood is perhaps the most-fortunate gift in life.

If there was a trick, there must be a trickster.