I never do such things, however. I only consider them. If I did them, they would be sure I had gone mad again. Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as...

He has tried imagining her as a prostitute-he often plays this private mental game with various women he encounters-but he can't picture any man actually paying for her services. It would be like...

a good portion of the women in the Asylum were no madder than the Queen of England. Many were sane enough when sober, as their madness came out of a bottle, which is a kind I knew very well. One of...

but it is my true belief that it was the doctor that killed her with his knife; him and the gentleman between them. For it is not always the one that strikes the blow, that is the actual murderder;

My letters! All dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string.… -ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850.

There is a little verse I remember from a child: Needles and pins, needles and pins,When a man marries his trouble begins. It doesn't say when a woman's trouble begins.

{...} he often talked to himself and he was the best conversationalist he knew; {...}

On my Tree of Paradise, I intend to put a border of snakes entwined; they will look like vines or just a cable pattern to others, as I will make the eyes very small, but they will be snakes to me; as...

The truth is that very few understand the truth about forgiveness. It is not the culprits who need to be forgiven; rather it is the victims, because they are the ones who cause all the trouble. If...

My mother said Aunt Pauline meant kindly but had standards, which were all very well for those that could afford them.

I would like to be found. I would like to see. Or to be seen. I wonder if, in the eye of God, it amounts to the same thing.

Lying, says MacKenzie. A severe term, surely. Has she been lying to you, you ask? Let me put it this way-did Scheherazade lie? Not in her own eyes; indeed, the stories she told ought never to be...

Then she lent me her red flannel petticoat until I should get one of my own, and showed me how to fold and pin the cloths, and said hat some called it Eve's curse but she thought that was stupid, and...

Heaven, for the Presbyterians, must resemble a banking establishment, with each soul tagged and docketed, and placed in the appropriate pigeonhole.

Have they forgotten that I'm in here? They'll have to bring more food, or at least more water, or else I will starve, I will shrivel, my skin will dry out, all yellow like old linen; I will turn into...

recently returned from Boston, where she was staying with her Aunt, to broaden her education. She has turned out a charming young woman, everything one might wish for, and displayed a courtesy and...

Help is what they offer but gratitude is what they want, they roll around in it like cats in the catnip.

It is very odd to be standing in a locked room in the Penitentiary, speaking with a strange man about France and Italy and Germany. A travelling man. He must be a wanderer, like Jeremiah the peddler....

I see what he's after. He is a collector. He thinks all he has to do is give me an apple, and then he can collect me.

He's a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman

For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it. Mary

They say, Grace, why don't you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose Miss I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won't bend in that direction any more.

He's coming to hate the gratitude of women. It is like being fawned on by rabbits, or like being covered with syrup: you can't get it off.

Grace's will is of the negative female variety - she can deny and reject much more easily than she can affirm or accept. Somewhere within herself - he's seen it, if only for a moment, that conscious,...

The door of Reverend Verringer's impressive manse is opened by an elderly female with a face like a pine plank; the Reverend is unmarried, and has need of an irreproachable housekeeper. Simon is...

The truth is I don't want him watching me while I eat. I don't want him to see my hunger. If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting...

If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything.

Today she wears her habitual expression of strained anxiety; she smells of violets.

There is a Do this or Do that with God, but not any Because.

It's a wonder they can sit down at all, and when they walk, nothing touches their legs under the billowing skirts, except their shifts and stockings. They are like swans, drifting along on unseen...