To love and to labor is the sum of living.

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.

Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.

I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ

The value of the personal relationship to all things is that it creates intimacy and intimacy creates understanding and understanding creates love.

The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements.

The period without the diary remains an ordeal. Every evening I want my diary as one wants opium.