For action, whatever its immediate purpose, also implies relief at doing something, anything, and the joy of exertion. This is the optimism that is inherent in, and proper and indispensable to action, for without it nothing would ever be undertaken. It in no way suppresses the critical sense or clouds the judgment. On the contrary this optimism sharpens the wits, it creates a certain perspective and, at the last moment, lets in a ray of perpendicular light which illuminates all one's previous calculations, cuts and shuffles them and deals you the card of success, the winning number.

One's life, from being an exterior thing, grows inwards. Its intensity stays the same; and, d'you know, it's most mysterious, the corners in which the joy of living can sometimes hide away.

A writer should never install himself before a panorama, however grandiose it may be.

My poor life This shawl Frayed on strongboxes full of gold I roll along with Dream And smoke And the only flame in the universe

what are you looking for? There is no Truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust,stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. what can you do about it, my poor friend?

A mud-stained sunlight began to splatter the sodden fields, and the hateful, nasal world of birds began to come to life. It seemed to me that I was coming out of a suffocating nightmare and that the low clouds flying before the wind were the shreds of an evil dream.

I'm not an extraordinary worker, I'm an extraordinary daydreamer. I exceed all my fantasies-even that of writing.