One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, like any knight of the grail, and the journey is always towards the other soul, not away from it. . . . To love you have to learn to understand the other, more than she understands herself, and to submit to her understanding of you. It is damnably difficult and painful, but it is the only thing which endures.

You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.

I like Australia less and less. The hateful newness, the democratic conceit, every man a little pope of perfection.

For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery

The journey of love has been rather a lacerating, if well-worth-it, journey.

The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment.

America exhausts the springs of one's soul - I suppose that's what it exists for. It lives to see all real spontaneity expire. But anyhow it doesn't grind on an old nerve as Europe seems to.