I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality

For a bag of pepper, they could cut each other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls... The bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes; the unknown seas, the loathsome diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence and despair. It made them great! By heavens! It made them heroic; and it made them pathetic, too, in their craving for trade with the inflexible death levying its toll on young and old

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.

A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance.

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.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.