they simply never understand, do they, that sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth?

and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter

Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself.

I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.

I lie as truthfully as I can.

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer.