"Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world."

"I write because if I didn’t, my heart would burst."

"Old age is a disease from which there is no recovery but the old nun's recent attack had certainly been brought on chiefly by the fatigue of so much travelling."

"Well, we never expected this!' they all say. 'No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdain…"

"A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest."