When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.

It was only in my forties that I started feeling young.

I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.

Somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself.

The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses.

No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.

Words are loneliness.