“From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.”

“I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.”

“And now, gentlemen, like your manners, I must leave you.”

“Illusions can be very convincing. No one has any reason to suspect that I am anything less than what I appear.”

“There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were.”

“Repeat after me: “I am a goddess. I am a goddess. I am a goddess.” Make this your mantra. From constant repetition you will start believing it, and if you yourself are convinced of your goddesshood, other people will be convinced.”