there is no gaiety as gay as the gaiety of grief.

Between threading a needle and raving insanity is the smallest eye in creation.

A lot of warm vulgarity is incomparably preferable to a little bit of pinched niceness

Jealousy is the lifelong noose hanging about the neck of love.

If happiness comes at all: which is by no means prearranged; it comes by the way, while you are seeking for something else. Something outside yourself, beyond yourself: in a brief absorption of self-forgetfulness.

[On journalists:] They are the scavengers of society who, possessing no guts of their own, tear out the guts of celebrities. They have the sycophantic, false enthusing gush of maiden aunts: who are accustomed to being trampled on doormats.

But there is that about well-intentioned advice that has the opposite effect of the one intended, and causes a Spanish fly of perversity to enter into the hitherto passive soul.