Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman's body and a pitiably starved soul.

When I was three years old I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and ordinary life until I was ten.

I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.

The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn.

Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying, but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.

I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius.

I do not sing nor play, but I adore music, particularly Chopin. I like him because I cannot understand him.

One must always say things that aim to interest, because in the world one must after all pay for one's keep.

I read of the Kalamazoo girl who killed herself after reading the book. I am not at all surprised. She lived in Kalamazoo, for one thing, and then she read the book.

There is really no right and wrong. I recognize no right and wrong.

Why should the killers of the world be "the future" and not us?

You couldn't allow yourself to get bored. THAT would be a fight.

I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence.

I killed her once and died for her many times and I still have nothing to show for it. I always search for her ; I always remember her. I carry the hope that someday she will remember me.

I made a mistake. I should've had two accounts, one for personal and one for office. And I didn't, and I take responsibility for that.

You can't solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and [the problem's] past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it.

We need to change society's ordering principle from economic to humanitarian values, from money as the bottom line to love as the bottom line.

People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.

Press not a falling man too far; 'tis virtue: His faults lie open to the laws; let them, Not you, correct him.