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

There is no feeling to be compared with the feeling of having written and finished a story.

I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That’s no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.

The ostrich burying its head in the sand does at any rate wish to convey the impression that its head is the most important part of it.

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.

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.

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.