In music I feel most deeply the passing of things.

[in the]..curious way that my idealism has been mixed with my fatalism, so that I can possess the soul of a dreamer and that of a cynic at the same time......I possess a power of magic...[to] destroy the balance of a well-designed destiny with my diabolical mind.

The shell is America's most active contribution to the formation of character. A tough hide. Grow it early.

At first she beckoned and lured one into her world; then, she blurred the passageways, confused all the images, as if to elude detection.

There are books which we read early in life, which sink into our consciousness and seem to disappear without leaving a trace. And then one day we find, in some summing-up of our life and put attitudes towards experience, that their influence has been enormous.

What is love but acceptance of the other, whatever he is.

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.