Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.

One nourishes one's created characters with one's own substance: it's rather like the process of gestation. To give the character life, or to give him back life, it is of course necessary to fortify him by contributing something of one's own humanity, but it doesn't follow from that that the character is I, the writer, or that I am the character. The two entities remain distinct.

I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

[On travel:] Who would be so besotted as to die without having made at least the round of this, his prison?

Do not mistake me. I am not yet weak enough to yield to fearful imaginings, which are almost as absurd as illusions of hope, and are certainly harder to bear. If I must deceive myself, I should prefer to stay on the side of confidence, for I shall lose no more there and shall suffer less.