You must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image, - mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart, the most remote recesses of your brain, - you must search them for the image, for the glamour, for the right expression. And you must do it sincerely, at any cost: you must do it so that at the end of your day's work you should feel exhausted, emptied of every sensation and every thought, with a blank mind and an aching heart, with the notion that there is nothing, - nothing left in you.

They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy

It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.

I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.