Sofia 1900.
"I really ought not to talk because I don't give myself the trouble to put my thoughts on general things in order and in every comment I always have the desire to embrace everything. I follow my own thoughts but love the immediate point and my brain is not in the proper condition to command its own vagaries."
Sofia 1900.
"What a delightful and full summer I have had. I can only reiterate that I am satisfied. I have had so much. Given my nature and my life, more than anyone I know. I may be mistaken in everything but I never doubt my application when I am about to act. Perhaps I will some day, but I don't think so. I have learned a certain 'science de la vie,' meaning this time the artificial, irrational life that is practiced and that I despise. Apart from this I have my own notion of real life and that is my own luxury. When I write so it sounds so big and so out of place for a girl, I always regret saying anything. If what I think means anything it will be shown in my life and so far my life is only a selfish, soft existence, so perhaps that is all I mean. I don't know that I love many things with conviction, but I know I have a contempt with conviction for many things."
"I have stopped looking at life as written with a big L. Regarding it only as an indefinite term of years is much less appalling; it does not lessen the joys and does lessen the sorrows and disappointments. The method now is to catch every minute and stretch it for all it is worth."
"You say I am not adaptive. It is difficult to s'entendre on what that means. Many sides I am, to my detriment. Too many sides for it seems to me I can fit into almost any opening with equal interest. And I find very few environments wholly uncongenial. I am not conscious of exacting in my nature any particular strain or line but what irritates and antagonizes me in any environment is the presumption on the part of the creator of that environment that theirs is the only world-view. I suppose the really strongest thing in me is an instinctive spirit of contradiction, for I always rise spontaneously against anything and everything that is proclaimed to me as being so. This is perhaps rather sweeping but it is more or less so. People influence me never by what they tell me but by the general impression they make on me and that I see them make on other people. I believe what I just wrote is nonsense. I only mean to say that I am only intolerant of intolerance. I think the ordinary rules of good behavior demand a certain amount of tolerance and with that any milieu is possible. I am sure of a few things but these few things are very firmly fixed in my mind. Nothing surprises me."
Sofia, 1900.
"I know there is a certain fundamental something in me that will make me apply the same reasoning to everything and I am never worried about any question. In fact I don't know what it is to have a question in mind—that which might be one is simply left out. I cannot say I know myself of course, but I know more of myself than anyone else does and I am certainly more severe. I do not recognize a good thing in me. I believe I am level headed and more or less reasonable, but that is not my merit. Any sanity of judgment I have comes from Mama. Whatever good there may be is due entirely to her. I am not afraid of anything. I am ready for anything. The truth is the only thing worth caring about. Not the great universal truths that one can search and cherish while living in a mass of lies but just the truthfulness of one's life and everyday actions. Try to call things what they are and it is a perfect realm of ever increasing delight, for everything around us is lies from beginning to end. But in general everything is lies and the ambitions are all false and the education is no better than the shoes that are put on Chinese female feet to stunt and deform them. What a sweet and perfect simile. How did I happen to fall on it?"
Sofia 1900.
"I am thinking seriously of working just about twice as much as I did last winter. If one would do anything the least in art one must give oneself to it 24 hours and live these 24 hours double. There is no art but good art and what is not best is not art at all. I hate pretense. It only exists among people who know nothing. I know nothing in any line but I would rather remain a nullity studying with serious intentions than profit of or repose upon some meaningless accidental achievement. Of all traits presumption is the most insufferable. Oh, how one is anxious to put one's finger in pies one is completely incapable of understanding."