I have never read a line of Walt Whitman.

I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.

When I wrote my book I wanted to love someone. I wanted to be in love. Now I know that I shall never be in love - and I no longer wish to be.

The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn.

Just why I sent it to the publishers would be hard to say, but when I had finished it I felt that it was literature, because it is real and because it was well written. And I know that the world wants such things.

I want to live quietly.

I would rather be a fairly happy wife and mother.

There is really no right and wrong. I recognize no right and wrong.

My intention to lecture is as vague as my intention is to go on the stage. I will never consider an offer to lecture, not because I despise the vocation, but because I have no desire to appear on the public rostrum.

The only joy I had was writing what was. That book was. It no longer amuses me to be all the things I was when I wrote that. But it is my story as I was then.

When I was three years old I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and ordinary life until I was ten.

Let me but make a beginning, let me but strike the world in a vulnerable spot, and I can take it by storm.

I want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day.

I was born to be alone, and I always shall be; but now I want to be.

I never give my real self. I have a hundred sides, and I turn first one way and then the other. I am playing a deep game. I have a number of strong cards up my sleeve. I have never been myself, excepting to two friends.

The book, you understand, was not written for publication. It was the portrayal of my emotions, the analysis of my own soul life during three months of my nineteenth year. I wrote then all the time, just as I do now, but, though the book is in diary form, it is not a diary.

Well, if I am not vulgar, neither is my book. I wrote myself. Suggestiveness is always vulgar. But truth never. My book is not even remotely suggestive. I call things by their names. That is all.

I read of the Kalamazoo girl who killed herself after reading the book. I am not at all surprised. She lived in Kalamazoo, for one thing, and then she read the book.

I have never read a line of Walt Whitman.

I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.

Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman's body and a pitiably starved soul.

You may think me crude, and probably I am crude, but I am not so crude as I was, for I am clever enough to see that the girl of nineteen who thought herself a genius was only an unusual girl writing her heart out.

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.

I've never made plans for more than a day ahead.

It is with pain that I read of the dire effects of my book upon the minds of young girls.

One must always say things that aim to interest, because in the world one must after all pay for one's keep.

I do not sing nor play, but I adore music, particularly Chopin. I like him because I cannot understand him.

I want fame more than I can tell. But more than I want fame I want happiness.

Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying, but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.

I love devils.

Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

As a comic, I used to know more about pop culture.

My brother plays guitar and base and writes. His name is Chase Ryan.

I want to always find new ways of reinventing myself.

Well, you know my number one cause has always been that women's reproductive health needs to be protected.

I have no special strategy. I can just wait to see what my opponent offers.

Everything is dangerous my dear fellow. If it wasnt so life wouldnt be worth living.

To be happy in this world, first you need a cell phone and then you need an airplane. Then you're truly wireless.

AIDS is a plague - numerically, statistically and by any definition known to modern public health - though no one in authority has the guts to call it one.

Being in a space that's not a studio, it kind of creates an openness of 'We can do whatever we want here; we're not on the clock.'

I am not insecure about being a journalist.

If I could find a way to make a film that takes you into the mind of a fighter, where you have 36 minutes of combat with so many different emotions, so many highs and lows, so many obstacles to overcome, I'd do that.

It was always sort of my dream to make handbags and I wanted a handbag that was very sharp, very structured, very tailored... I wanted a bag you could put all of your things in it, you can open it, you could close it, you could hid all your tricks, but it's not all lumpy.

Let us reflect on the obvious but often neglected lesson that state-sanctioned discrimination never looks good in hindsight.

I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

I've done all of them except for Oprah. My shoes were on Oprah but they ran out of time so I wasn't on. I left my shoes in Chicago so they could put them on the show.

The First Amendment only says 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.' It can disrespect all it wants.

Creating the right advisory board for your startup can be the single most important step you take in building a new business.