It’s a terrible thing to be alone – yes it is – it is – but don’t lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath – as terrible as you like – but a mask.

I’m a writer first and a woman after.

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives – one is so very small – but that is the satisfaction of writing – one can impersonate so many people.

This is not a letter but my arms around you for a brief moment.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

Some couples go over their budgets very carefully every month. Others just go over them.

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.

Life never becomes a habit to me. It’s always a marvel.

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can’t build on it it’s only good for wallowing in.

What do you want most to do? That’s what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.

It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.

I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.

It’s a terrible thing to be alone – yes it is – it is – but don’t lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath – as terrible as you like – but a mask.