“I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more o...”

“I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neuroti...”

“At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry’s language, entering Henry’s ...”

“I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.”

“I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it.”

“The other night we talked about literature's elimination of the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated "dose" of life. I said, almost indignantly, "That's the danger of it, it prepares yo...”

“The hobgoblin of a little mind may be the genius of a great one.”

“To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.”

“It's difficult being an intellectual in a bread and butter sort of town.”

“I wandered in the streets, what with the noise the people made, the number of the coaches, the running of the footmen, the swaggering of great courtiers, and the thrusting aside of everybody, many ...”

“I do feel that Ive managed to make something I could maybe call my worldover timelittle by little. And when Im inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to ...”

“The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat in...”

“Nothing is as it seems, but something is everything it is made out to be.”

“Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?”

“You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.”