l 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 an