I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.

I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.

The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.

When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.

A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.