Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked.

Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.