“The only rule is, do what you really, impulsively, wish to do. But always act on your own responsibility, sincerely. And have the courage of your own strong emotion.”

Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.

If only there weren’t so many other people in the world,’ he said lugubriously.

She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte.

That’s the place to get to – nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.

I am part of the sun as my eye is of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea.

Don’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?

Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one’s history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

The dead don’t die. They look on and help.

He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society or fear of oneself.

It is a fine thing to establish one’s own religion in one’s heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.

How she hated words, always coming between her and her life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the live-sap out of living things.

The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love.

Every true artist is the salvation of every other. Only artists produce for each other a world that is fit to live in.

We fucked a flame into being.

You’re always begging things to love you, he said, as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them–

What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted sentiment. When what one supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality.