For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.

For us, everything was a performance.” A small, private smile catches me off guard and I glance down, hoping he won’t see it. “Everything poetic.

How many great men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it?

and just forget about my envy, Lord and give me what I need

You aren't what I expected. I wish you were. It'd be so much easier.

Just as the pious man prays without speaking a word and the Almighty hearkens unto him, so the artist with true feelings paints and the sensitive man understands and recognizes it.

When she goes about her kitchen duties, chopping, carving, mixing, whisking, she moves with the grace and precision of a ballet dancer, her fingers plying the food with the dexterity of a croupier.

Beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up

The older I get, the more centered I become and the more I think I really know about myself. What I know is that what other people do doesn't really have any effect on me.

No, no, no, I don't snort no more, I'm tired of waking up on the floor. No thank you please, it only makes me sneeze, then it makes it hard to find the door.

Whichever way I turn, whatever phase of social life presents itself, the same conviction comes: Independent bread alone can redeem woman from her curse of subjection to man.

All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.