Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one's ability to do so.

Anyone who loves his neighbor within the limits of the world is doing no more and no less injustice than someone who loves himself within the limits of the world.

Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.