One always, sooner or later, comes upon a city which is an image of one's inner cities. Fez is an image of my inner self. ... The layers of the city of Fez are like the layers and secrecies of the inner life. One needs a guide. ... There were in Fez, as in my life, streets which led nowhere, impasses which remained a mystery.

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

At first she beckoned and lured one into her world; then, she blurred the passageways, confused all the images, as if to elude detection.

I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly.

I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.

I am quite wiling to confide entirely in human being, except that at some moment or another human beings get preoccupied, moody, busy, inattentive, and there come an end to the interest, and this never happens in a journal!

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living.