Every child, everywhere; in the whole world there was not one child who was not gravely, sweetly dancing.

He thought of how calm he was. His calm was so perfect that he could not destroy it even by being conscious of it.

He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.

You once said to me that I talk like a man in a book. I not only talk, but think and feel like one. I have spent my life in books; literature has deeply dyed my brain its own colour. This literary colouring is a protective one--like the brown of the rabbit or the checks of the quail--making it impossible for me to tell where literature ends and I begin.

Like a dead man, only friction could make him warm or violence make him mobile.

Art Is a Way Out. Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering.

Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute the only universal language.