You don’t know what a trial it is to be —like me. I've got to keep my face like steel in the street to keep men from winking at me.

Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others.

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one... just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.

The world is always curious, and people become valuable merely for their inaccessibility

The water reached up for her, pulled her down tenderly out of the heat, seeped in her hair and ran into the corners of her body. She turned round and round in it, embracing it, wallowing in it.