Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.

We did not touch each other. We were both leaning over the abyss.

A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.

Your strength is soft, indirect, delicate, tender, womanly. But it is strength just the same.

Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth.

Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me - the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

Pain is something to master, not to wallow in.