No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?

Today I will go to wait for her again, because I cannot help it, because my whole being seems now to be bound up in the being of one so different from myself and yet so exquisitely familiar that I can scarely understand what has happened.

We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.

I've always been interested in foreign relations. It's my belief that study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present rather than an escape from it.

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

Sometimes people damage paintings or sculpture because they love it. They throw their arms around a statue in a fit of hysterical passion and it falls over.