“Now there are times when I think that all the pains I took in those days were quite unwarranted, and perhaps I might have done better to let myself be deceived. And other times I think exactly the opposite, and I believe I behaved perfectly, because, living alone as I have, with such independence, I have been able to see the word and take advantage of opportunities that I probably wouldn’t have had if I had married. Still, one thing or the other, it’s all the same, because I’m sixty now and there’s nothing I can do about it. I find it very idiotic when people spend so much time worrying about the things they’ve left behind and the mistakes they’ve made. I think things turned out this way because this was the only way they could turn out, and that maybe my reasons for not marrying are entirely different, and have nothing to do with the way I explain things to myself.”
“It’s strange, though. By the time I was thirty I had completely abandoned the idea of a new marriage. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do what a number of my friends of mine have done, but I’ve resisted. Maybe I’ve been cold, but I’ve always felt that unless there is real love, the other part is disgusting. As for real love, I doubt I’ve inspired it in anyone. If I haven’t done what so many other women have done, I don’t think it was out of any moral scruples; I think I could have overcome all kinds of scruples, because in other respects I haven’t had any at all. That’s just the way it was, and clearly this is how my life was supposed to turn out. I have it on good authority that all kinds of lies are told about me. People don’t believe that a person as free as I am, who has always done whatever she wanted, who has traveled half the world and not been religious or a prude, has denied herself the pleasure of sleeping with a man. Everyone who thinks this about me is mistaken: I haven’t known any other man than my poor husband, and I can even swear that I knew him very little, almost not at all. A few friends and a few books have explained to me what love in its most secret intimacies is like. I can affirm that I know nothing of all this: I am almost as innocent as a child before puberty.”
“Nor has any religious idea been behind this. Because I believe in the religion my mother taught me, but I have never wanted to give it much thought. I am certain that if I started to think too hard about it I would end up losing my faith; the faith I have today is just as weak as it was when I was twenty. I have kept it this way all my life. Perhaps my chastity has allowed me to continue going to confession twice a year. I have very little love lost for priests, and if I had found myself under compulsion to tell them certain things, it’s possible I would have stopped practicing. Since I’ve never done anyone a bad turn, my confessions are very brief, and I make it a point to find a priest who doesn’t know me and will make quick work of it.”
“Not all the things I have accomplished in this world have been exclusively out of vanity. I know that vanity is my worst defect, but I feel that I have often invested my actions with generosity and even idealism. If my life has any grace at all it is in not having succumbed to the routine of the majority of women of my class. I know people have considered me a snob. Maybe there is some truth in it: maybe I have been a slave to fashion. But I like to think that I have been sincere much more often. And, above all, that my actions have obeyed a natural impulse. Perhaps the circumstances of my life and the freedom I have always enjoyed have helped me be exactly who I am.”
“What interested me were books and traveling and people with a certain spirit, just as what interested me in fashion and human relations were their most ephemeral charms and their most sensitive details. In my home I have sought to arrange things so that an intelligent person can find corners on which to rest his eyes. And I have sought out the conversation and company of these intelligent people, just as I confess that I have sought out the company of people who are no less brilliant for having been the worst idiots in the futile life of our country. There have been times when I have not wanted anyone to get the better of me, which has left me open to accusations of being an eccentric or even a madwoman, and even of being what I have never been: an unnatural woman.”
“I believe that a woman who is not very feminine has no place in the world. It is true that in one essential sense of life I haven’t been at all feminine: I mean I have not been a mother. But in all the other ways, externally, spectacularly, I have wanted to be more feminine and more exigent than the rest. I have looked at myself in the mirror many times, and I know perfectly well how to separate beauty from elegance. Perhaps it is also my particular sin of vanity to believe that elegance is more important than beauty.”
“If I have not had children, if I have not been able to love a man as I had dreamed of doing, I have made sure to do innumerable favors and to be a true friend. At sixty years of age, I realize exactly how naïve I have been and how far I have taken my lack of cynicism …”
“With all the favors I’ve done, I am sure none has been met with gratitude. The women I have felt closest to and had the most affection for, the persons I have aided morally and materially, are the ones who have criticized me the most and invented the most lies about me. I know that my society and my class is the least imaginative and most malicious of them all. If I have tried to play a more active and personal part in works of culture and beneficence than most of these ladies, they have only seen in my actions the desire to stand out and be praised. On occasion, and in all innocence, I have traveled in the company of men, good, discreet friends of mine, because I find that I can talk about anything with men, and it doesn’t get boring, as it does with my close women friends. And some of these men, while still dispensing all the attentions a lady deserves, have come to treat me in the cordial and evenhanded way they would any companion. The long journeys I have made in these conditions have been some of the loveliest moments of my life. Later I learned how the most spiritual and refined ladies I received in my home had criticized me. I’ve had one good fortune: I have not been very affected by what people said or thought about me. I get this spirit of independence of from Mamà.”
“I know my culture is very shallow, and there have been those, more sincere or less pleasant than the rest, who have made it clear to me that I am a perfectly ordinary woman whose ideas are sadly banal. I have never pretended to be wise, and I do not envy anyone his talent. I have enjoyed life in my own way, and I have felt great emotion. Even if I was not a person one might call sensitive, I have endeavored to listen to people I found sensitive, in order to modify my taste, and I have learned to enjoy things I felt impervious to by nature. If artists and men of letters have had some regard for me, it has been owing to my inclination to listen and learn and my willingness to modify my own criteria. I know I have been considered grotesque, ridiculous, and pretentious. But by behaving as I did, I have saved myself from boredom and, along the way, either with my name or my money, I have done a bit of good for my country.”