Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful?

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world.

Take a quick dip, relax with a schnapps and a sandwich, stretch out, have a smoke, take a nap or just rest, and then sit around and chat until three. Then I hunt some more until sundown, bathe again, put on white tie and tails to keep up appearances, eat a huge dinner, smoke a cigar and sleep like a log until the sun comes up again to redden the eastern sky. This is living…. Could it be more perfect?

It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.

I would like to live. . . open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.