very few people change after well say seven or seventeen. Not really. They get more this or more that and of course look a bit different. But inside they are the same.

It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?

...morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.

My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.

Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.

The perpetual hunger to be beautiful and that thirst to be loved which is the real curse of Eve.