“I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.”

I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.

New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.

But I see no reason why a woman should not grow and develop in all those outlets which are suited to her nature, it matters not at all what they may be.

I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.

For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.

There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.

But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family.

Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.

And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help.

When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.

I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now – yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life.

Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent.

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant–one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care.

Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.

It is hard to contend against one’s heart’s desire; for whatever it wishes to have it buys at the cost of soul.

The frustration that follows our persistence to override God’s plan for our life hits hard and different.

Sometimes things are not as that much harder as we make it.

Vulnerability is hard – faking it forever is harder.

We really have to be mindful of other’s lives and hardships.

Something feels funny. I must be thinking too hard.

It’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.

Imperfection is inherited, therefore we all sin, but fighting the war of sin is the greatest war of all because we all die in the end no matter how hard we fight.