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

One little human truth is that opinionated people don't hold much with other people's opinions, and it is a great pleasure to some of them to be able to ascribe incurable defects, such as belonging to a certain sex; or base motives, or lack of understanding, to anyone whose views they disagree with.

I think I've only spent about ten percent of my energies on writing. The other ninety percent went to keeping my head above water.

words can never get at the truth.

. . . all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in this landslide of remembered losses.

[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.

we know that the Furies do not come uninvited.