You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.

My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?

Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was "broken.

I am a phoenix who runs after arsonists.

I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.

Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.