"I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am not a woman but a man, for I can think, I can write, I can be a thousand things."

"Why do we always think of the past as so much more beautiful than the present?"

"Really, I don't like human beings at all, except as a general proposition."

"I am fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall."

"I am a woman, and I have a right to my own opinions."