A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.

A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

…What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is—terror.

Speech is civilization itself.

I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.

There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?