Now everybody who knows anything at all knows perfectly well that even a business letter does not deserve the paper on which it is written unless it contains at least one significant phrase that is worth waking up in the night to remember and think about.

Truth out of season was sourer than strawberries at Christmas time.

Love was a fever that came along a few years after chicken-pox and measles and scarlet fever.

the time to grant anybody a favor is the day the favor is asked, for that day is the one psychological moment of the world when supply and demand are keyed exacty to each other's limits, and can be mated beatifically to grow old, or die young, together. But after that day -- !

Marriage is not for me. I tell you that I am Blank Verse. I am talent, and I do not rhyme with Love. I am talent and I do not rhyme with man.

I wish I could have lived just one day when the world was new. I wish—I wish I could have reaped just one single, solitary, big Emotion before the world had caught it and—appraised it—and taxed it—and licensed it—and staled it!

And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together-year after year-for this special privilege of being 'bored to death,' the 'real girl' that you're asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call 'improbable'-is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner-or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom-or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room-waiting to be discovered!