“When it's for each other that people give things up theydon't miss them”

“It wouldn't be the first time she had seen herself obliged to accept with smothered irony other people's interpretation of her conduct. She often ended by giving up to them --it seemed really the way to live --the version that met their convenience.”

“It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.”

“He valued life and literature equally for the light they threw upon each other; to his mind one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart.”

“When you have lived as long as I, you will see that every human being has his shell, and that you must take the shell into acount. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There is no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we are each of us made up of a cluster of apurtenances. What do you call one's self? Where does it begin? Where does it end? It overflows into everythng tht belongs to us - and then flows back again. (...) One's self - for other people - is one's expression of one's self; and one's house, one's clothes, the books one reads, the company one keeps - these things are all expressive.”

“Anger does not last, that way, for years. But there are other things. Impressions last, when they have been strong.”

“There were always people to snatch at you, and it would never occur to them that they were eating you up. They did that without tasting.”