You have never been curious about me; you never wanted to explore my soul.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.

I don't believe other people are ever as foolishly excited as I am while I'm working. How could they be? Writers would have to live in trees.

Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.

Every time one leaves anywhere, something precious, which ought not to be killed, is left to die.

But one day we shall be rich, and the next poor. One day we shall dine in a palace and the next we'll sit in a forest and toast mushrooms on a hatpin.