All encounters with children are touched with social embarrassment.

One doesn’t become a witch to run around being helpful either…. It’s to escape all that – to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day.

To think of losing is to lose already.

Is it the realization that people recently psychoanalyzed tend to be dreadful bores which makes the U.S.A. army reject them for the draft?

How dreadful it is that because of our wills we can never love anything without messing it around! We couldn’t even love a tree, a stone even; for sooner or later we should be pruning the tree or chipping a bit off the stone.

... possessiveness cannot accept; it cannot even strike a fair bargain; it has to confer.

Rouen shone in dark sunlight and a storm swept it away from my eyes and churned up the broad river with waves which pounced up like cats as our train drew out of the arches of the bridge.