“Nevertheless, the fact remained, it was impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them.”

“But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.”

“often she had seemed to herself to be moving among those vanished figures of old books and pictures, an invisible ghost among the living, better acquainted with them than with her own friends. she very nearly lost consciousness that she was a separate being, with a future of her own.”

“How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it is liking one felt, or disliking?”

“All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part.”

“Unpraised, I find it hard to start writing in the morning; but the dejection lasts only 30 minutes, and once I start I forget all about it. One should aim, seriously, at disregarding ups and downs; a compliment here, a silence there;[...] the central fact remains stable, which is the fact of my own pleasure in the art.”

“Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.”