Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

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

destruction is ultimately self-destruction.

The obstacle became his alibi for weakness.

Life, religion and art all converge in Bali. They have no word in their language for 'artist' or 'art.' Everyone is an artist.

I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will add the sum of me to her. She will be June plus all that I contain.