Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.

I am not cynical. I am just old. I know what is going to happen next.

I was always furious because you couldn't take out more than three books in one day. You would go home with your three books and read them and it would still be only five o'clock. The library didn't shut till half past, but you couldn't change the books till the next day.

There is no real escape from autobiography into biography. The self has to be faced, or we die.

Man seems not so much wicked as frail, unable to face pain, trouble and growing old. A good woman knows that nature is her enemy. Look at what it does to her.

One friend dies and we remain indifferent; another dies, perhaps less intimate, and we see ourselves as dead, and weep, mourn, tear our hair or find ourselves caught up in the madness of the wake, competing with others as to who was closest, now suffers most.

Be bold, but not too bold. Have courage, but not too much.