I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.

When I am most deeply rooted, I feel the wildest desire to uproot myself.

You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing.

He had a mania for washing and disinfecting himself. . . . For him the only danger came from the microbes that attacked the body. He had not studied the microbe of conscience which eats into the soul.

[On Paris:] A city never entirely known, yet which gives you the feeling of intimacy, of possessing it intimately.

Asia discovered two remedies for the cruelty of man, art and religion. America discarded both and is drowning in hate and aggressivity.