Truth is the only good and the purest pity. ... Men lie for profit or for pity. All lies turn to poison, but a lie that is told for pity or shame breeds such a host of ills that no power on earth can compass their redemption.

I do not think about absent persons as often or with such intense longing as I think of places. They lie one below the other in my mind.

Fear is the deep motive of abstract art - fear of a repellent civilization which is dominated by the power of things. ... who can be surprised if, more sensitive than the others, the artist is terrified by the power things have acquired over us?

Speaking the truth, once you have started it, is too exhilarating to draw back.

Failures to love are irremediable and irredeemable.

Any marriage worth the name is no better than a series of beginnings - many of them abortive.

The strangest thing about life is not its frightful cruelty, but that it can be gentle.