Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Think what stupid things the people must have done with their money who say they're 'happier without'.

The visible world is a daily miracle for those who have eyes and ears; and I still warm hands thankfully at the old fire, though every year it is fed with the dry wood of more old memories.

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

He had her in his arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain terrors shriveling up like ghosts at sunrise.

Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.

She wanted, passionately and persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability.