To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man. I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.

I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.

I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.

And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help.

Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.

But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.

There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.

Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won't hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity!

Devour your fear.

I'll always choose you." Yes that was the word. "Every single lifetime, I'll choose you. Just as you have always chosen me. Forever.

Please don't tell me not to be sad. I know you don't like to see me hurting, but my sadness is mine to feel, not yours to heal. Let me be sad. It will pass in its own time. It always does.

I don't believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details...

The art of music, rather more daughter than imitator of nature, in her impressive and mysterious language minding and educating us, rouses directly our temper and rules us to the depths of our souls.

In the middle of my little mess, I forget how BIG I'm blessed!

A film should be like a rock in the shoe.

I feel sanguine enough to say that there has never been a better set of conditions for open democratic politics because there is no need for unified front politics.

Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free; that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve.