Elizabeth Hardwick

“New York is a city of conversations overheard, of people imagining themselves according to other people's ideas.”

“In the end, what is a normal life? It is what you do when you are not dreaming.”

“What is a home? It is a place where you are understood.”

“Perhaps the old view of spinsterhood as a blight and a misfortune is, in fact, a useful one, since it encourages the woman to make something of her own life.”

“A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.”

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading.”

“Pain is instructive.”

“There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.”

“Writers, and particularly poets, are particularly prone to madness.”

“I don't think you can be a good writer unless you are a good reader.”

“Sometimes I have given myself a rule: write only what you can’t say.”

“The personal is not political. It is simply personal.”

“The tolerance of the public is the greatest of all virtues.”