And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Woman does not forget she needs the fecundator, she does not forget that everything that is born of her is planted in her.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

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

Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.

The obstacle became his alibi for weakness.

I looked at it [revolver] as if it reminded me of a crime I had committed with an irrepressible smile such as rises sometimes to people’s lips in the face of great catastrophes which are beyond their grasp, the smile that comes at times on certain women’s faces while they are saying they regret the harm they have done. It is the smile of nature quietly and proudly asserting its natural right to kill.