Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.

Do you remember how life yearned out of childhood toward the "great thing?" I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings.

I am a house gutted by fire where only the guilty sometimes sleep before the punishment that devours them hounds them out in the open.

Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant.

If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing . . . then you are a writer.