Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.

autobiography at least saves a man or woman that the world is curious about from the publication of a string of mistakes called 'Memoirs.

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother.

There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

Of new acquaintances one can never be sure because one likes them one day that it will be so the next. Of old friends one is sure that it will be the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.