If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself, Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.

But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem: they might point to the catkins hanging from the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the rain descending on black earth in early spring. --- And we, who always think of happiness rising, would feel the emotion that almost baffles us when a happy thing falls.

The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise.

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

Where I create, there I am true.

Of all my books, I find only a few indispensible.

Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confidence in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer