To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.

writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.

life is a succession of readjustments.

The paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

...the power-loving temperament is more dangerous when it either prefers or is forced to operate in what is materially a void. Wehave everything to dread from the dispossessed.