The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize. In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty.

... writing letters is thinking, just as talking to you is thinking.

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.

I am beginning to respect the apathetic days. Perhaps they're a necessary pause: better to give in to them than to fight them at your desk hopelessly; then you lose both the day and your self-respect. Treat them as physical phenomena -- casually -- and obey them.

My diaries were written primarily, I think, not to preserve the experience but to savor it, to make it even more real, more visible and palpable, than in actual life. For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.

People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that -- just dump it down on top of you, a useless strong-scented burden.