“On a cold winters day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one anothers quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them clos...”

“In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well c...”

“When one considers how vast and how close to us is the problem of existencethis equivocal, tortured, fleeting, dream-like existence of oursso vast and so close that a man no sooner discovers it tha...”

“Genuine tranquility of the heart and perfect peace of mind, the highest blessings on earth after health, are to be found only in solitude and, as a permanent disposition, only in the deepest seclus...”

“The first forty years of life give us the text the next thirty supply the commentary on it.”

“With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”