A story? No. No stories, never again.

The Journal is not essentially a confession, a story about oneself. It is a Memorial. What does the writer have to remember? Himself, who he is when he is not writing, when he is living his daily life, when he is alive and real, and not dying and without truth.

If nothing were substituted for everything, it would still be too much and too little.

Express only that which cannot be expressed. Leave it unexpressed)

Lovers of painting and lovers of music are people who openly display their preference like a delectable ailment that isolates them and makes them proud.

The disaster... is what escapes the very possibility of experience—it is the limit of writing. This must be repeated: the disaster de-scribes.

A writer who writes, ''I am alone''... can be considered rather comical. It is comical for a man to recognize his solitude by addressing a reader and by using methods that prevent the individual from being alone. The word alone is just as general as the word bread. To pronounce it is to summon to oneself the presence of everything the word excludes.