 Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement. |
| Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again. |
| When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord. |
| Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. |
| Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness. |
| That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. |
| A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one. |
| There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before. |
| The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor. |
| The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young. |
| There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. |
| I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived. |
| The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. |
| Sometimes I wonder why God ever trusts talent in the hands of women, they usually make such an infernal mess of it. I think He must do it as a sort of ghastly joke. |
| Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer. |
| When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless. |
| Where there is great love, there are always wishes. |
| The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own. |
| Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen. |
| All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens. |
