Either one fails in one's art or in one's life.

Dreams are necessary to life.

Acapulco in the sunset seems like a balm; it enters the blood like a drug after one inhalation of the scent of flowers, one glimpse of the bay iridescent like silk, the sunset like the inside of a shell, so much like the flesh of Venus.

I spell 'god' with a small 'g' because I do not believe in him, but I love to swear by him.

Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.

You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers - you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance.

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.