“She was the subject creature, and versed in the arts of the enslaved.”

“Her black brows, her reddish-tawny hair and the pure red and white of her complexion defied the searching decomposing radiance: she might have been some fabled creature whose home was in a beam of light.”

“In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.”

“Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.”

“To read is not a virtue; but to read well is an art, and an art that only the born reader can acquire. The gift of reading is no exception to the rule that all natural gifts need to be cultivated by practice and discipline; but unless the innate aptitude exist the training will be wasted. It is the delusion of the mechanical reader to think that intentions may take the place of aptitude.”

“The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.”

“Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.”