Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. ...But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think - and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.

Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.

Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.

I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.

The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.

For the first time she had dimly realized that only the hopeless are starkly sincere and that only the unhappy can either give or take sympathy--even some of the bitter and dangerous voluptuousness of misery.