The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by stealing only what he needs, but by taking from the world an endless toll in payment of something irreplaceable, which is the lost faith.

When I don't write, I feel my world shrink. I lose my fire, my color.

One may gain one truth at the expense of another.

I miss the animal buoyancy of New York, the animal vitality. I did not mind that it had no meaning and no depth.

Three or four threads may be agitated, like telegraph wires, at the same time, and if I were to tap them all I would reveal such a mixture of innocence and duplicity, generosity and calculation, fear and courage, I cannot tell the whole truth simply because I would have to write four journals at once.

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.

Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.