Mary MacLane Quotes

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

I am a selfish, conceited, impudent little animal, it is true, but, after all, I am only one grand conglomeration of Wanting ...

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

I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.

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

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

Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness.

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

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

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

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

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

I live an immoral life. It is immoral because it is deadly futile.

... the neurotic torture of being seductive regularly - by the night: the more that perchance the struggle always is unconscious.

Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in love?

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.

However great one's gift of language may be, there is always something that one cannot tell.

It is the trivial little facts about anything that describe it the most effectively.

I would rather be a fairly happy wife and mother.

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

I fail remarkably. I write Eye when I mean Tooth. I write Fornicate when I mean Caress. I write Wine when I mean Blood.

I want to live quietly.

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

I have never read a line of Walt Whitman.

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

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.

It is of the dubious inevitable side of human nature - like gold teeth and tinned salmon and bastard lacy valentines

At this point I meet Me face to face. I am Mary MacLane: of no importance to the wide bright world and dearly and damnably important to Me.

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 art of Good Eating has two essential points: one must eat only when one is hungry, and one must take small bites.

People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis.

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

I write every day. Writing is a necessity - like eating.

I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.

May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity - a virtuous woman.

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

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

It is to be hoped you are not 'intellectual,' which is an unpardonable trait