To make ourselves invisible to creditors or to the envious, and even to our own worries, we can take advantage here on earth of a great democratic institution-in fact, democracy's only success-the night.

I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.

Sadness flies on the wings of the morning, and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.

Human beings are like timid punctuation marks sprinkled among the incomprehensible sentences of life.

A wife loves out of duty, and duty leads to constraint, and constraint kills desire.

Who would prefer peace to the glory of hunger and thirst, of wading through mud, and dying in the service of one's country?

I have been a woman for fifty years, and I've never yet been able to discover precisely what it is I am.