Natalie Clifford Barney

"When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks."

"Paris has always seemed ... the only city where you can live and express yourself as you please."

"Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth."

"Fatalism is a lazy man's way of accepting the inevitable."

"Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed."

"It's necessary to use suffering. Otherwise, one is used by it."

"At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affair… which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness."

"When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks."