It is not chic to be too chic.

I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint.

We cannot do better than to accept the standards of other times, and to adapt them to our uses.

I was not ugly. I might never be anything for men to lose their heads about, but I need never again be ugly. This knowledge was like a song within me. Suddenly it all came together. If you were healthy, fit, and well-dressed, you could be attractive.

It is not chic to be too chic.

To conform within rational limits to a given style is no more servile than to pay one's taxes or to write according to the rule of grammar.

What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes with it, a house that gives us beauty as we understand it- and beauty of a nobler kind that we may grow to understand.