Most grown people are like icebergs, three-tenths showing, seven-tenths submerged - that is why a collision with one of them is unexpectedly hurtful.

I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate-or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my 'ten minutes'. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.

People don't know the consolations of being unsuccessful ... If I had been successful I should have had no peace or time.

As one gets older being sad and miserable can become a bit of a habit. To counteract this, she suggests making a point of savoring such things as the tastiness of a piece of fruit, or other small things we might have been prone to overlook during our younger, busier days.

To wake for the first time in a new place can be like another birth.

You can be a nuisance to your family. You mustn't be a nuisance to your friends.

It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.