No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.

The history of the world is the history of the privileged few.

Work on one thing at a time until finished.

That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life.

For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.

Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become the path himself.

I didn't dare to think of anything then except the "facts." To get beneath the facts I would have had to be an artist, and one doesn't become an artist overnight. First you have to be crushed, to have your conflicting points of view annihilated. You have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common denominator of the self. You have to get beyond pity in order to feel from the very roots of your being.