To become young again would seem to me an appalling prospect. Youth is a kind of delirium, which can be cured, if it is ever cured at all, by years of painful treatment.

The truth is that the phenomena of artistic production are still so obscure, so baffling, we are still so far from an accurate scientific and psychological knowledge of their genesis or meaning, that we are forced to accept them as empirical facts; and empirical and non-explanatory names are the names that suit them best.

We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.

All mirrors are magical mirrors, and we never see our faces in them.

Self-respecting people do not care to peep at their reflections in unexpected mirrors, or to see themselves as others see them.