Ellen Glasgow

''I waited and worked, and watched the inferior exalted for nearly thirty years; and when recognition came at last, it was too late to alter events, or to make a difference in living.''

''A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.''

''What I hated even more than the conflict was the lurid spectacle of a world of unreason.''

''The world of the egotist is, inevitably, a narrow world, and the boundaries of self are limited to the close horizon of personality.... But, within this horizon, there is room for many attributes that are excellent....''

''My first reading of Tolstoy affected me as a revelation from heaven, as the trumpet of the judgment. What he made me feel was not the desire to imitate, but the conviction that imitation was futile.''

''... so long as the serpent continues to crawl on the ground, the primary influence of woman will be indirect ...''

''I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.''

''I was always a feminist, for I liked intellectual revolt as much as I disliked physical violence. On the whole, I think women have lost something precious, but have gained, immeasurably, by the passing of the old order.''

''Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?''

''... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.''