You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.

When I see a beautiful shell like that I can't help feeling a regret about what's inside it.

Those days are over. I have to be won all over again every time you see me.

Most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning.

Progress was a labyrinth ... people plunging blindly in and then rushing wildly back, shouting that they had found it ... the invisible king-the élan vital-the principle of evolution ... writing a book, starting a war, founding a school.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre.

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.