All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper - just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something'.

Something needn't be large to be good.

What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.

Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by.

Ports are necessities, like postage stamps or soap, but they seldom seem to care what impressions they make.

It was cold and windy, scarcely the day to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, seabirds in ones or twos. The rackety, icy, offshore wind numbed our faces on one side; disrupted the formation of a lone flight of Canada geese; and blew back the low, inaudible rollers in upright, steely mist.

Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible.