That life is difficult, I have often bitterly realized.

Each man carries the vestiges of his birth; the slime and eggshells of his primeval past with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below.

Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening...

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

When we hate a person, what we hate in his image is something inside ourselves. Whatever isn't inside us can't excite us.

I was out of my bed in one second, trembling with excitement, and I dashed to the door and into the adjoining room, where I could watch the streets below from the windows.