A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

The hatchet must fall on the block; the oak must be cleft to the centre. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. Here is the pen and the paper; on the letters in the wire basket I sign my name, I, I, and again I.

Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse, it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about.

Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.

When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.

Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigues, I have had my vision.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.