When I was three years old I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and ordinary life until I was ten.

May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity - a virtuous woman.

Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?

It is with pain that I read of the dire effects of my book upon the minds of young girls.

I want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day.

Let me but make a beginning, let me but strike the world in a vulnerable spot, and I can take it by storm.

People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis.