99 Quotes by Mary MacLane

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius.

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.

Some day the Devil will come to me and say: 'Come with me.'And I will answer: 'Yes.

Except two breeds - the stupid and the narrowly feline - all women have a touch of the Lesbian: an assertion all good non-analytic creatures refute with horror, but quite true: there is always the poignant intensive personal taste, the flair of inner-sex, in the tenderest friendships of women.

I am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not sympathetic. I am not generous. I am merely and above all a creature of intense passionate feeling. I feel—everything. It is my genius. It burns me like fire.

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

But I am too young yet to think of peace. It is not peace that I want. Peace is for forty or fifty. I am waiting for my Experience.

This article is going to be very egotistical and MacLanesque and maybe somewhat shocking besides, so I strongly advise divers citizens of Butte not to read it. It occurs to me that some of the things I write do not agree with the constitutions of the said citizens – it seems to be bad for their livers – hence this preliminary note of warning. So now if you go right on and read it and it affects your liver unpleasantly, don’t blame me.

As I stand among the barren gulches in these days and look away at the slow-awakening hills of Montana, I hear the high, swelling, half tired, half-hopeful song of the world. As I listen I know that there are things, other than the Virtue and the Truth and the Love, that are not for me. There is beyond me, like these, the unbreaking, undying bond of human fellowship – a thing that is earth-old.