You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.

I like Mr. Dickens’ books much better than yours, Papa. Said one of Thackeray’s daughters.

I still notice the burned house, mornings, when I walk along the beach. “Well, obviously I do not notice the house. What I notice is what remains of the house. One is still prone to...

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano. What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play...

Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover…or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

Still, how I nearly felt. In the midst of all that looking.

Once, I had a dream of fame. Generally, even then, I was lonely.

A simple creature unlettyrde. Julian of Norwich called herself. The most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. Echoed Jane Austen—four hundred years afterward.

Have I ever said that Turner once actually had himself lashed to the mast of a ship, to be able to later do a painting of a storm? Which has never failed to remind me...

Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner...