"I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and wrong."

"One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left."

"A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals."

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?"

"I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it."

"You were reserved for my future."

"Her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it."

"What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?"

"We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generositie."

"She was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no mockery, no irony. Before long it became obvious that she was much disposed towards conversation."

"She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul."

"It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them."

"Try to be someone upon whom nothing is lost!"

"I never did anything in life to anyone's imagination."

"I might show it to you, but you'd never see it. The privilege isn't given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it."

"She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth."

"Sorrow comes in great waves...but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain."

"I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will."