In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.

Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.