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.

The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life-the terror of art.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even if they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to the very soul. Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth, out of everything I think.

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.