“Oh, but there's such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,' wailed Anne. 'You may know a thing is so, but you can't help hoping other people don't quite think it is.”

“A meeting is that measure whereby a large number of people gather and some say things that they don't think and others think things that they don't say.”

“You don’t see the world the way other people do. And when you let your guard down, the way you think, the way you say things… you make people look at things differently. You make people feel things.”

“I know that's the sort of thing people say and I really hate it when people say the sort of things people say. I always think, 'You don't mean that, you just think it sounds good.”

“What other people think of you is none of your business," she says. "You can't change it, you can't control it. The only thing you can control is your reaction to it.”

“Sometimes they threaten you with something - something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself.”