Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?
These webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.
The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.
Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.[Very often misquoted as:]For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle.
Why are women, so much more interesting to men than men are to women?
Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?
When a subject is highly controversial – and any question about sex is that – one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.
