I have always been the lover - never the beloved - and I have spent much of my life waiting for trains, planes, boats, footsteps, doorbells, letters, telephones, snow, rain, thunder.

Art is the triumph over chaos.

For lovers, touch is metamorphosis. All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better.

Children drown, beautiful women are mangled in automobile accidents, cruise ships founder, and men die lingering deaths in mines and submarines, but you will find none of this in my accounts.

I love you not for the person you are, but for your possibilities.

Only the opium eater truly understands the pain of death.

Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.