Truly Alice, books are wonderful things; to sit alone in a room and laugh and cry, because you are reading, and still be safe when you close the book; and having finished it, discover you are changed, yet unchanged! To be able to visit the City of Invention at will, depart at will – that is all, really, education is about, should be about.

All mothers love their own children as best they can, according to their temperament and circumstances, and all mothers should have done better, in their children's eyes, when the going gets tough for the children.

There is probably an innate masochism in a lot of women that ends up disappointed if men don't ill-treat them.

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.

No one should be allowed to give back the gift of life, unless they are very old and full of tears, when the body outlives the spirit, when they should be allowed to join the others who've already gone.

The peculiar need to write is increased, it seems, rather than allayed with practice.