Small jerks began to appear in my legs, my walk became unsteady precisely because I wanted it to be smooth.

There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.

Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered - delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist.

Language must resound with all the harmonies of music. The writer must always, at all times, find the tremulous word which captures the thing and is able to draw a sob from my soul by its very rightness.

And love was creation's source,creation's ruler; but all love's ways are strewn with blossoms and blood, blossoms and blood.

I stood in the lee of an overhanging rock and thought of many things.

The writer must be able to revel and roll in the abundance of words; he must know not only the direct but also the secret power of a word. There are overtones and undertones to a word, and lateral echoes, too.