God and other artists are always a little obscure.

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!

Ones real life is often the life that one does not lead.

For, try as we may, we cannot get behind the appearence of things to reality. And the terrible reason may be that there is no reality in the things apart from their appearences.

There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.