“Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.”

If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature.

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.

By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet.

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.

You don’t think before you do something foolish. You do your thinking afterwards.

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now!

I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.

No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.