The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream.

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.

The more I see of life the more I perceive that only through solitary communion with nature can one gain an idea of its richness and meaning.

A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Sheep with a nasty side.

Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.