we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves.

Wind moving through grass so that the grass quivers. This moves me with an emotion I don't even understand.

there does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing.

That is the fearful part of having been near death. One knows how easy it is to die. The barriers that are up for everybody else are down for you, and you've only to slip through.

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.

Do you remember your childhood? I am always coming across these marvelous accounts by writers who declare that they remember 'everything.' I certainly don't. The dark stretches, the blanks, are much bigger than the bright glimpses. I seem to have spent most of my time like a plant in a cupboard.

I am poor - obscure - just eighteen years of age - with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse.