You have to be told the news, and one of us had to do it! We threw the dice, and the bad luck
fell to me. So here I am, no happier to be here than you are to have me: nobody likes the man
who brings bad news.
The dearest profit is sometimes all too dear: that depends on the source. Do you
understand me? A fortune won is often misfortune.
A man should never be too sure of anything.
Her minds a traitor: crimes kept in the dark cry for light, and the guardian brain shudders.
Reason is God's crowning gift to man.
You'll never see me taken in by anything vile.
Let him do, or dream to do, more than a man can.
There is no guilt in reverence for the dead.
So lately this last flower of Oedipus' line drank the sunlight! but now a passionate word
and a handful of dust have closed up all its beauty.
She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver
What's done can't be undone.
A man is not always what he is born into.
I wish you all the joy you can wish.
We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.
He that is down can fall no lower.
Nothing common can seem worthy to you.
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
If you can paint, I can walk. . . anything can happen, don't you think?
There is no hurry, we shall get there some day.
Everyone has to be fake. No one wants to do it, no one wants to have it done to them, but
it is done anyway. It's called being nice. And when you're sick of being phony, move away from
people. You're better off alone.
By putting myself below others, I have become the person I am today. I do not do this
because my motive is to become higher than those I put myself under, I do this because it seems
natural to me. Because I have seen this is the way I have become greater than the person I was
ten years, ten months, ten days, ten minutes ago.
I am just too much.
I'm not conceited. Conceit is a fault and I have no faults.
I didn't know why exactly. It was sort of silly, I suppose, but somehow it was as if I
was being told about something, something wonderful, something beautiful waiting just for me.
All I had to do was wait long enough.
Awake, arise, or be forever falling.
She dared not look in the glass. She could not face the whole horror - the pale yellow
dress, idiotically old-fashioned silk dress with its long skirt and its high sleeves and its waist
and all the things that looked so charming in the fashion book, but not on her, not among all
these ordinary people. She felt like a dress maker's dummy standing there, for young people to
stick pins into.
"Flies trying to crawl," she repeated. If she could say that over often enough and make
herself see the flies, she would become numb, chill, frozen, dumb. Now she could see flies crawling
slowly out of a saucer of milk with their wings stuck together; and she strained and strained
(standing in front of the looking glass, listening to Rose Shaw) to make herself see Rose Shaw
and all the other people there as flies, trying to hoist themselves out of something, or into
something, meager, insignificant, toiling flies. But she could not see them like that, not other
people. She saw herself like that - she was a fly, but the others were dragonflies, butterflies,
beautiful insect, dancing, fluttering, skimming, while she alone dragged herself up out of the
saucer. (Envy and spite, the most detestable of vices, were her chief faults.)
But it was all so paltry, weak-blooded and petty-minded to care so much at her age, to be
still so utterly dependent on people's opinions and not have principles or convictions, not to be
able to say as other people did, "There's Shakespeare! There's death! We're all weevils in a
captain's biscuit" - or whatever it was the people did say.
What has gone is also not nothing.
The longing to get away from it all never was so great as in our present time of tension
and trouble. We want something to lift us out of the mess into which much of life seems to have
fallen.
It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of
terrors. It were better to say that stains of blood are as lovely as rose petals.
I'm sorry for your sake. I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play
with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep
science for life.
I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love.
But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually
is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If
I ever get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.
You are absolutely careless about sending out invitations. It is very foolish of you.
Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.
Even if I got past my problems, I would just go out and find new ones.
Sometimes when you hold out for everything, you walk away with nothing.
It's not much of a tail, but I'm sort of attached to it.
I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special.
It's funny how the earth never opens up and swallows you when you want it to.
I tried; I tried too hard; I embarrassed myself.
You may live a long while with some people and be on friendly terms with them and never
speak openly with them from your soul.
You can't always sit in your corner of the forest and wait for people to come to you. . .
you have to go to them sometimes.
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.
The most important thing to a lot of people, is to belong to something that's hip or
whatever. To be a part of something that's not society, just a clique. And they get real side-
tracked trying to think like everyone else. They don't realize that you have to motivate yourself
to do things you want to do. Some people just like going along for the ride. And those are the
kind of people I don't get
along with too well.
Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably an injured one.
All art must come from experience, or it is as fake as the soul of the one who writes it.
