I love titles and organizing chains of ideas. I like that very much.

Fairy tales are about money, marriage, and men. They are the maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them survive.

The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the mover.

Meanings of all kinds flow through the figures of women, and they often do not include who she herself is.

If you want to learn about a culture, you look at what buildings the people lived in but you also want to know about their cosmos.

The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

The sombre-suited masculine world of the Protestant religion is altogether too much like a gentlemen's club to which the ladies are only admitted on special days.

Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.

When I was young, I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm.

I was brought up a Catholic and I was quite fervent, because I was sent to a convent school.

No weight in her pockets and far too much heaviness in her heart.

Leverage the pain of excuses into the seeds of greatness.

The spirit of the law is the least of the things we're prepared to violate.

This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star.

Disgraces are like cherries, one drawes another. [Disgraces are like cherries, one draws another.]

Why should he who is scared be careful?

I just love family meetings. Very cozy, with the Christmas garlands round the fireplace and a nice pot of tea and a detective from Scotland Yard ready to arrest you.

I like enthusiasts of any kind.

Agriculture is at the same time the most tranquil, healthy, and independent occupation.

It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.