99 Quotes by Mary MacLane

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.

One kind of man I impatiently scorn is the kind that looks bored if I mention Ibsen or ceramics or Aztec civilization but is interested instantly, alertly, if I mention my garters

Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisiteas the pure love of one woman for another?

I can think of nothing in the world like the utter littleness, the paltriness, the contemptibleness, the degradation, of the woman who is tied down under a roof with a man who is really nothing to her; who wears the man’s name, who bears the man’s children — who plays the virtuous woman. . . . May I never, I say, become that abnormal merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity — a virtuous woman.

I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings…

I began to be a woman at twelve, or more properly, a genius.

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.

Some people say that beauty is a curse. It may be true, but I'm sure I should not have at all minded being cursed a little.

I want to live quietly.