It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

I press to my centre, and find there is something there.

Now, aged 50, I'm just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever they are.

One should aim, seriously, at disregarding ups and downs; a compliment here, silence there ... the central fact remains stable, which is the fact of my own pleasure in the art.

... the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected ... the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other.

And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.