one should discuss one's difficulties only when they are over.

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.

to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.

The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye.

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.