At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affair… which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness.

Some critics interpret her as saying that the aggression that leads to war is visible in all male relationships. "My queerness" Natalie Clifford Barney said "is not a vice is not deliberate and harms no one. In her writings Natalie Clifford Barney supported feminism and pacifism.

She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels ranging from the salacious French bestseller Sapphic Idyll to The Well of Loneliness arguably the most famous lesbian novel of the 20th century.