I am dying. I haven't drunk champagne for a long time.

I should think I'm going to be a perpetual student.

..when one has no real life, one lives by mirages. It's still better than nothing.

I agree that one can't dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for literature than the critics and the author's own conscience.

If you fear loneliness, then don't get married.

My holy of holies is the human body.

When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder - that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold. ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make.