Whatever happens I have had these blissful, perfect moments and they are worth living for.

In the shortest sea voyage there is no sense of time. You have been down in the cabin for hours or days or years. Nobody knows or cares. You know all the people to the point of indifference. You do not believe in dry land any more - you are caught in the pendulum itself, and left there, idly swinging.

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

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.

Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.

Warm, eager, living life-to be rooted in life-to learn, to desire, to know, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.