The way to write well is to live intensely.

Peace was the third emotion. Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotions made the ply of human life.

I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.

I see through most people; I'm hardly ever wrong. I see at once what they've got in them.

Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.

As a woman, I have no country