There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort

Unhappiness makes beggars or accountants of us all.

The real reason women fall in love abroad is not that they are free of domestic inhibitions but that they translate their love of stone and place into love of flesh. ... Is this true?

Violence is its own anesthetist. The numbness it induces feels very much like calm.

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

There is something worse than dying, and that is humiliation - at least so it seemed to me.