“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.”

To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is, at last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Be truthful, and the result is bound to be amazingly interesting.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

Distorted realities have always been my cup of tea.

Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure.

I feel all shadows of the universe multiplied deep inside my skin.

For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.

I have lost friends, some by death, others by sheer inability to cross the street.

I like going from one lighted room to another, such is my brain to me; lighted rooms.

Intimacy is a difficult art.

They went in and out of each other’s minds without any effort.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.