“In my end is my beginning.”

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man

I am moved by fancies that are curled, around these images and cling, the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.

The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.

This love is silent.

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.

For I have known them all already, known them all—Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other Who think the same thoughts without need of speech

I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.

If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.

The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.

But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again.

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

In love with September’s sun the season that begins all witchy things and stirs the soul.

In the beginning, I wrote OK songs, but they didn’t have a unique perspective.

The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself – and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

My book came out; and people began to think that topsy-turvy Louisa would amount to something after all.