The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism.

This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.

What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity.

Every writer, big or small, needs to say or write that the genius is always hissed at by his contemporaries. Naturally, this is not true, it happens only occasionally and often by chance. But this need within the writer is enlightening.

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.