Neither of us knows what the public will think. There's no doubt in my mind that I have found out how to begin (at forty) to say something in my own voice; and that interests me so that I feel I can go ahead without praise.

On or about December 1910, human character changed.

Night had come—night that she loved of all times, night in which the reflections in the dark pool of the mind shine more clearly than by day.

The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl.

The history of most women is hidden either by silence, or by flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.

Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?

But Sasha who after all had no English blood in her but was from Russia where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden, and sentences often left unfinished from doubt as to how best to end them.