Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness.

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

The highest thing one can do in literature is to succeed in saying that thing which one meant to say. There is nothing better than that - to make the world see your thoughts as you see them.

I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.

But in my life, in my personality, there is an essence of falseness and insincerity. A thin, fine vapor of fraud hangs always over me and dampens and injures some things in me that I value.

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

One must always say things that aim to interest, because in the world one must after all pay for one's keep.