It is when people are told their own thoughts that they think they are being insulted.

I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.

But by the time that I had nothing left, I myself was the lightest thing of all for fate to get rid of.

As we grow old we slowly come to believe that everything will turn out badly for us, and that failure is in the nature of things; but then we do not much mind what happens to us one way or the other.

some travelers are drawn forward by a goal lying before them in the way iron is drawn to the magnet. Others are driven on by a force lying behind them. In such a way the bowstring makes the arrow fly.

There are many ways to the recognition of truth, and Burgundy is one of them.

To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.