There are only a few bits of absolute knowledge in the world, people can learn only one or two fundamental facts about each other, the rest is decoration and prejudice.

What we need is endless courage.

All the old houses that I knew when I was a child were full of books, bought generation after generation by members of the family. Nobody told you to read this or not to read that.

Love must be learned again and again... Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.

I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.

A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.

[On Gertrude Stein's Making of Americans:] I doubt if all the people who should read it will read it for a great while yet, for it is in such a limited edition, and reading it is anyhow a sort of permanent occupation.