He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood.

The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.

To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders...It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.