“No one wants to tell the tale of being robbed by an old woman whose locomotion is assisted by hand-carved staff.”

“Let us… take in our hands the staff of experience… To be blind and to think that one can do without this staff is the worst kind of blindness.”

“Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.”

“Pleasing things: finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.”

“Writing seems to rob me of my being: it is a second hand mode of communication, a pallid, mechanical transcript of speech, and so always at one remove from my consciousness.”

“I tell you this as a cautionary tale: beware of getting what you want. It's bound to disappoint you.”

“Let those whose Hearts and Hands are strong
Tell eager Tales of mighty Deeds;
Enough if my sequestered song
To hush'd and twilight Gardens leads!

Clear Waters, drawn from secret Wells
Perchance may fevered Lips assuage;
The Tales an elder Pilgrim tells
To such as go on Pilgrimage.

Such the soft Path my Words would trace,
Thus with the moving Waters move;
So leave, across the Ocean's Face,
A glimmering Stair to Hope and Love.”

“The old tale of Sleeping Beauty might end happily in French or English, but he was in Russia, and only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale.”

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”

“If Lincoln had an affair with a slave woman, it would be an outrage, but when Clinton does it with one of his staff, everyone is okay with it.”