To love is never just to love since it is also to will to love, and ... to love in spite of oneself, to allow oneself to be overcome by one's love.

That is exactly the writer's problem. What does literature stand for in a hungry world?

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature.

One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.

I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm—because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more.

What I see is teeming cohesion, contained dispersal... For him, to sculpt is to take the fat off space.