“What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”

I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing – not just a waiting.

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it’s the secret to good sex.

Art is a form of consciousness.

Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.

Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once, and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.

It hurts to love. It’s like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.

It is not the position, but the disposition.

Your beautiful don’t let anyone tell you different

He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.

You don’t have to have a thigh gap to be beautiful. It is possible to love your body the way it is.

If you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

A house without books is a poor house, even if beautiful rugs are covering its floors and precious wallpapers and pictures cover its walls

Your imperfections make you beautiful, they make you who you are.

I don’t think I was born beautiful. I just think I was born me.

Little Things isn’t about anyone in particular, it’s about all girls. You’re all beautiful and you need to hear it more often.