No absolute is going to make the lion lie down with the lamb: unless the lamb is inside.

When one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere.

Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it! For you will need it. For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

The east is not for me--the sensuous spiritual voluptuousness, the curious sensitiveness of the naked people, their black, bottomless, hopeless eyes.

Any novel of importance has a purpose. If only the "purpose" be large enough, and not at outs with the passional inspiration.

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.

Is our day of creative life finished? Does there remain to us only the strange, awful afterwards of the knowledge in dissolution,the African knowledge, but different for us, who are blond and blue-eyed from the north?.... There was another way, the way of freedom. There was the paradisal entry into pure, single beingwhich accepted the obligation of the permanent connection with others, and with the other, submits to the yoke and leash of love, but never forfeits its own proud individual singleness, even while it loves and yields.