everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

we can predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable

who shall measure the heat and violence of a poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?

I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humor, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect, & each comes to daylight at the present moment.

before parting that night we agreed that the objects of life were to produce good people and good books.

I is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being.

There is no mark on the wall to measure the precise height of women. There are no yard measures neatly divided into the fractions of an inch that one can lay against the qualities of a good mother or the devotion of a daughter or fidelity of a sister or the capacity of a housekeeper.

You are you. That is what consoles me for the lack of many things.

Upon the obstinate irrepressible conviction which makes youth so intolerably disagreeable—I am what I am, and intend to be it.

When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends. I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else.

I have lived a thousand lives already. Every day I unbury--I dig up. I find relics of myself in the sand that women made thousands of years ago...

Great acts are made up of small deeds.