“How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.”

I’ve felt as if I didn’t exist, as if I were invisible, miles away from the world, miles away. You can’t imagine how much alone I’ve been all my life.

There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.

How huge it is, how empty, this great space for which I have been longing all my life. Still no letters.

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.

Let us not waste love, it is rare enough.

I think being a woman is like being Irish, Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the time.

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.

I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.

I just enjoy translating, it’s like opening one’s mouth and hearing someone else’s voice emerge.

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.

Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.

Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. This is why all the world is a stage.

Youth is a marvelous garment.

The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.