“Although I admired scholarship so much in Cleric, I was not deceived about myself; I knew that I should never be a scholar. I could never lose myself for long among impersonal things. Mental excitement was apt to send me with a rush back to my own naked land and the figures scattered upon it. While I was in the very act of yearning toward the new forms that Cleric brought up before me, my mind plunged away from me, and I suddenly found myself thinking of the places and people of my own infinitesimal past.”

“I did not make myself the heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too common-place an affair as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever by my lot; but I was not confided to my own identify, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me at that age than my own sensations.”

“When I was your age I knew nothing about the world or my place in it. I figured I'd be someone's wife, then someone's mother. It never occurred to me to be someone myself.”

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”

“I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.”

“I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form.”