To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.

(Clothes) cannot change a man's nature. He's either kind or he isn't, with or without clothes.

There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, and exquisite mystical experience.

For misery don't blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.

We didn't starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.