the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him.

To mistake ugliness for reality is one of the frauds of the realistic school [of writing]. A hunger for the unknown and an aspiration toward beauty were inseparable from civilization. In America the word art was distorted to mean artificial.

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!

Convalescence. Such an utter weakness that you lie like an animal hibernating, playing possum. You float. You are adrift. Every current is stronger than you.

I believe that in judging our actions we are more severe than professional judges. We judge not only our actions, but our thoughts, our intentions, our secret curses, our hidden hate.

When you possess light within, you see it externally.

They courted the face on the screen, the face of translucence, the face of wax on which men found it possible to imprint the image of their fantasy.