I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.

If a writer stops observing he is finished. But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true at the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserve of things he knows or has seen.

You don't have to destroy me. Do you?

You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me. She looked toward the door, saw there was no one, then she sat on the side of the bed and leaned over and kissed me.

Everything that a painter did or that a writer wrote was a part of his training and preparation for what he was to do.