"You know that Jeannin has the peony, Quost has the hollyhock, but I have the sunflower, in a way."

"For me, life may well continue in solitude. I have never perceived those to whom I have been most attached other than as through a glass, darkly."

"I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless."

"My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like - but more true than the literal …"

"Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again."