The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.

For we think back through our mothers if we are women.

I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.

Life without illusion is a ghostly affair.

But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter!

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?