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

Eroticism is one of the basic means of self-knowledge, as indispensable as poetry.

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

Strange, isn't it, that no chemical will give a human being the iridescence that illusions have given them? Give me your hat.

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.

Innocence was gone from all our acts. Our habitual state of rebellion became a serious political crime.

Again I take a taxi to Clichy address, but feel that I do not want to go on loving Henry more actively than he loves me (having realized that nobody will ever love me in that overabundant, overexpressive, overthoughtful, overhuman way I love people), and so I will wait for him. So I ask taxi driver to drop me at the Galeries Lafayette, where I begin to look for a new hat and to shop for Christmas. Pride? I don't know. A kind of wise retreat. I need people too much. So I bury my gigantic defect, my overflow of love, under trivialities, like a child. I amuse myself with a new hat.