We often laughed at others in our house, and I picked up the craft of being polite while people were present and laughing later if there was anything to laugh about.

She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.

A rebellion against a tyrant is only immoral when it hasn't got a chance.

Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [...], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did.