Every gain made by individuals or society is almost instantly taken for granted.

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.

Man must learn to simplify, but not to the point of falsification.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

The place is good. How good, one must have circumnavigated the globe to discover. Why not stay? Take root? But roots are chains. I have a terror of losing my freedom. Free, without ties, unpossessed by any possessions, free to do as one will, to go at a moment's notice wherever the fancy may suggest--it is good. But so is this place. Might it not be better? To gain freedom one sacrifices something [...] and all that these things and people signify. One sacrifices something--for a greater gain in knowledge, in understanding, in intensified living? I sometimes wonder.

To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.

God: a gaseous vertebrate.