When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.

As a woman, I have no country

The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

Moreover, a book is not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built, if an image helps, into arcades or domes.

The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, and volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the land.

I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.

Consolation for those moments when you can't tell whether you're the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.