To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.

Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.

Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortunes

Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.

The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.