“The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.”

“There isn't time — so brief is life — for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving — and but an instant, so to speak, for that.”

“Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.”

“Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.”

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it.”

“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.”

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

“When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.”

“You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”