You make me tremendously happy to hold me undivided - to let me be the artist, as it were, and yet not forgo the man, the animal, the hungry, insatiable lover. No woman has ever granted me all the privileges I need - and you, why you sing out so blithely, so boldly, with a laugh even - yes, you invite me to go ahead, be myself, benture anything. I adore you for that. That is where you are truly regal, a woman extraordinary. What a woman you are! I laugh to myself now when I think of you. I have no fear of your femaleness.

For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured-disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui-in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don't look for them in the wrong places.

There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

You have to write a million words before you find your voice as a writer.

I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.