Human sympathy has its limits.

Having once found the intensity of art, nothing else that can happen in life can ever again seem as important as the creative process.

There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal--

You can stroke people with words.

Don't let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don't worry about losing your "personality," as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p.m.

I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.