The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.

If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.

Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.

A good book is an event in my life.

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader's soul.

You don't destroy what you want toacquire in the future.

Stupid Wars are easy to start but hard to end.

In America, racism exists but racists are all gone.

Appearances often are deceiving.

The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.

Vulnerability is not about winning, and it's not about losing. It's about having the courage to show up and be seen.

Confessional poetry is, to my mind, more slippery than poems that are sloppily autobiographical; I find the confessional mode much more akin to dramatic monologue.

Nature has left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.

Being a woman is hard work.

You can only maintain an immensely gothic attitude for so long before either killing yourself or beginning to feel like a poser.