More than any other beauty (though it is true of all beauty except in art) passion seems to me to have the seeds of its own destruction in it.

It is curious how any making of order makes one feel mentally ordered, ordered inside.

There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.

Lunches are just not good. They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning's work.

...I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except when I'm making love. Two things when you forget time, when nothing exists except the moment--the moment of writing, the moment of love. That perfect concentration is bliss.

One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.

If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.