I believe that a man is converted when first he hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling his hitherto unconscious self.

You can have your cake and eat it. But my God, it will go rotten inside you.

It's autumn and everybody feels like a disembodied spirit then.

there is no pornography without a secrecy.

One should stick by one's soul, and by nothing else. In one's soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one's own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors.

It seems to me a purely lyric poet gives himself, right down to his sex, to his mood, utterly and abandonedly, whirls himself roundtill he spontaneously combusts into verse. He has nothing that goes on, no passion, only a few intense moods, separate like odd stars, and when each has burned away, he must die.

One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality.