Words that didn't go away

That all my dreams might not prove empty, I have been writing this useless account—though I doubt it will long survive me.

(Lady Nijō, c. 1307, The Confessions of Lady Nijō; translated by Karen Brazell, Stanford University Press, 1976, p. 264.)

The lost words of women

I believe that every line a woman writes announces her. Perhaps it is that very fear of announcing herself that summons her to begin writing and causes her to halt in her tracks before nary a word is penned.

(from "On Writing Women's Autobiography" by Janet Lynn Roseman, from The Way of the Woman Writer, p. 13)

To not be forgotten

"I will and bequeath this book after my husband and myself are through with it, to my oldest grandson Bertie Williams....I trust what is worthy of emulation he may profit by.

"It is of more value to me than it could possibly be to my children, but I desire that it shall be kept in the family and treasured as a relic of by-gone days, not from any especial merit it possesses, but because I do not want to be forgotten."

(from Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories, 1857-1866, by Mollie Dorsey Sanford, U of Nebraska Press, 2003. p. xx).