About Mary MacLane: Mary MacLane was a controversial Canadian-born American writer whose frank memoirs helped usher in the confessional style of autobiographical writing. MacLane was known as the "Wild Woman of Butte".
I was born to be alone, and I always shall be; but now I want to be.
Some people say that beauty is a curse. It may be true, but I'm sure I should not have at all minded being cursed a little.
May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity— a virtuous woman. Anything, Devil, but that.
I am a selfish, conceited, impudent little animal, it is true, but, after all, I am only one grand conglomeration of Wanting…
It is of the dubious inevitable side of human nature—like gold teeth and tinned salmon and bastard lacy valentines
One's thoughts are one's most crucial adventures. Seriously and strongly and intently to contemplate doing murder is everyway more exciting, more romantic, more profoundly tragic than the murder done.
I Don’t Know whether lust is a human coarseness or a human fineness: I don’t know why death holds a so sweet lure since it would take away my Body: I don’t know that I wouldn’t deny my Christ, if I had one, three times before a given cockcrow...
People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis.
I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.
May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity - a virtuous woman.
Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman's body and a pitiably starved soul.
I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.
I have never read a line of Walt Whitman.
I never give my real self. I have a hundred sides, and I turn first one way and then the other. I am playing a deep game. I have a number of strong cards up my sleeve. I have never been myself, excepting to two friends.
I read of the Kalamazoo girl who killed herself after reading the book. I am not at all surprised. She lived in Kalamazoo, for one thing, and then she read the book.
I want to live quietly.
I want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day.
I would rather be a fairly happy wife and mother.
I've never made plans for more than a day ahead.
It is with pain that I read of the dire effects of my book upon the minds of young girls.
