I was a failure in Boston...because they thought I was too fashionable to be intelligent, and a failure in New York because they were afraid I was too intelligent to be fashionable.

Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.

... caprice is as ruinous as routine.

A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.

It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them.

Everybody who does anything at all does too much.

Damn words; they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in words.