In two weeks, despite these notes, I shall no longer believe in what I am experiencing now. One must leave behind a trace of this journey which memory forgets. One must, when this is impossible, write or draw without responding to the romantic solicitations of pain, without enjoying suffering like music, tieing a pen to one's foot if need be, helping the doctors who can learn nothing from laziness.

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

I'm not willing just to be tolerated. That wounds my love of love and of liberty.

Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.

One must not mistake majority for truth.