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

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.

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.

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.

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.

If we are to feel the positive feelings of love, happiness, trust, and gratitude, we periodically also have to feel anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow.

The substitute for knowledge is money.

Pay attention to the young, and make them just as good as possible.

Nobody does good to men with impunity.

I still love listening to people's problems. I'm still good at giving people unsolicited advice.

Not everyone, the Collector was aware, is improved by the job he does in life; some people are visibly disimproved.

If you really believe in what you're doing, work hard, take nothing personally, and if something blocks your route, find another. Never give up.

I'm so picky. People hate going to the movies with me.

There's no love like the first.

Those who are fired with an enthusiastic idea and who allow it to take hold and dominate their thoughts find that new worlds open for them. As long as enthusiasm holds out, so will new opportunities.